The standard and its influencing factors of ecological compensation on marine protected areas based on CVM: A case study of Shengsi Ma'an Islands

The verification of ecological compensation standard is the key to the research on marine protected area ecological compensation, and the willingness of ecological compensation of stakeholders and its influencing factors are important foundations for formulating reasonable ecological compensation standard and improving compensation efficiency. Taking the Shengsi Ma'an Islands marine protection area (MPA) as an example, this paper determined the main recipients of the ecological compensation as residents and the main compensators as the government, tourists and non-local businessmen according to stakeholder analysis. On this basis, through the questionnaire survey of residents and tourists in the MPA, contingent valuation method (CVM) was selected to analyze the willingness to accept (WTA) of residents and the willingness to pay (WTP) of tourists. The results show that 68.54% of the surveyed residents have the WTA, and they are willing to accept an annual average of about 248.03 yuan. Their WTA is mainly affected by age, occupation and other factors, while the acceptance value is mainly affected by age, family income and other factors. Most tourists (97.62% of respondents) have the WTP, and they are willing to pay an annual average of about 203.55 yuan. The payment value is mainly affected by the family annual income, residence location and understanding of ecological compensation.