IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2013) 4-1

Research article
erdUsing Choice Experiment to Estimate the Value of
Sustainable Rattan Resource Management in Cambodia
OU RATANAK*WWF Cambodia Rattan Project Manager, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Email: ratanak.ou@gmail.com

MITSUHIRO TERAUCHITokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo, Japan
Received 12 December 2012

Accepted 30 January 2013(*Corresponding Author)

Abstract Rattan, which accounts of approximately USD 1.5 million of total revenue inCambodia, plays a crucial role in national and international trade for poverty reduction andconservation. Prek Thnot community, Kampot province was selected for implementing
sustainable rattan management approach 5 years ago including nursery management,enrichment planting and the development of a harvesting plan. Interviews with 324
families who have a forest dependence revealed that rattan is one of the top three options
for their livelihood improvement. The objective of this research is to establish the marginalutility of each attribute for sustainable rattan management. It was also used to estimate thepayment of each activity for sustainable management and productions. The results
revealed that 93% of local communities were willing to pay a tax fee through a revolving
fund for managing natural resources at their communities and only 7% rejected thepayment because they felt they did not gain profit from their contribution. All attributes
were found to be statistically significant at 1 and 5 percent except the benefit sharing from
Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), meaning that local
community are still not expected to get benefit from REDD+ or they did not well educatedon REDD+ in Cambodia. The marginal of willingness to pay of sustainable rattan
management shows that they are willingness to pay more for increasing endangered
species and recovering rattan resources in their communities through conservation andenrichment planting at degraded forest and over rattan harvesting areas. Hence, it can bestated the local community are well prepared for participating rattan management activities
and these results should be contribute to the making decisions by stakeholders at thecommunity of defining a new policy to be implemented by considering important on
biodiversity before implementing any activities.
Keywords choice experiment, choice modeling, endangered species, rattan coverage,
harvesting plan

INTRODUCTION
Forest  products  account  for  approximately  5%  of  Cambodia’s  Gross  National  Product  (GDP)  and  72% of the workforce is engaged in agriculture and forestry activities (FA, 2008; FA, 2010). NonTimber Forest Products (NTFPs) is the secondary in importance and contributes to livelihood
development and poverty reduction in the country with the total of approximately 70-90% ofhouseholds involved in collection and trade in forest products and NTFPs and the total income of
NTFPs is about USD 300 to USD 400 annually (McKenney et al, 2004). Rattan is one of the top
three of NTFPs in Cambodia with value of approximately USD 1.5million (Davies and Mould,
2010; WWF, 2010) and according to Forestry Statistics (2007), the main trading of NTFPs in
Cambodia, including resin, rattan and bamboo. During the last decade, the rattan trade has
decreased dramatically because of land conversion, over harvesting and unsustainable management(Vuthy and Hourt, 2006). Thus, the sustainable management of this resource is widely considered
to be a good strategy to both biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement for the benefitⒸ ISERD

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IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2013) 4-1of the development of Cambodian economy. WWF Cambodia has selected this area for the piloting
a sustainable rattan productions program. It guides policy makers or stakeholders to learn local
community preferences and needed before implementing projects or activities. Main activities
contributing to sustainable rattan management are harvesting techniques and harvest planning ,enrichment planting native and economical rattan species in the community land and species
conservation in the sustainable harvesting areas by increasing endangered species. The three year
rattan harvesting plan was approved by the government in 2010 and stock, yields and location of
rattan harvested has been shown in the harvesting plan. Based on Prek Thnot community protectedareas roles and regulations, 5 percent of total value from selling rattan should be paid to acommunity trust fund for the benefit of their community development and biodiversity
conservation. Approximately 0.7 USD for 100 rattan canes has to be paid for community revolving
fund when they harvested rattan in sustainable management. The amount of money of local
communities who is willing to pay for biodiversity conservation and their livelihood development
is from the fee for harvesting rattan in their community land.
The application of non-market valuation technique to estimate benefits of alternativeenvironment management has been limited in Cambodia. The choice experience (CE) method, astate preference technique has been commonly applied in developing countries and recently, it has
been introduced in Cambodia. CE methods could also be useful in designing policies andimplementation of rural development project (Kohlm, 2001). The work of Ratanak and Yabe
(2009) in Mondulkiri province is one of a handful of studies employing the CE method to assess
the effect of environmental services on ecotourism development and management.
OBJECTIVE
The conditional logic model as an experimental method has been used to establish the marginalutility of each attribute for sustainable rattan management. It is also used to estimate the paymentof each activity for sustainable rattan management and productions. The data used in the empiricalpolicy evaluation literature came from a survey to collect information on household behaviors
before and during the project implementation.
METHODOLOGY
Choice models applied to non-marketed goods assume a specific continuous dimension as part of
the framework by using a discrete choice. They were inspired by the Lancasterian microeconomic
approach (Lancaster, 1966), in which individuals derive utility from the characteristics of the goods,
and the first study to apply choice models to non- market valuation was Adamowicz et al. (1994)
and Adamowicz et al., (1998). Recently, choice models have frequently been applied to thevaluation of non-market goods.
The stakeholder analysis, participatory tools and quantitative surveys underpinned all the
discussion of impacts, ensuring that differences between stakeholders identified and distribution of
costs and benefits assessed. The experimental design for both questionnaires were created using amain effect orthogonal statistical design generated using SPSS19. The alternatives for each choice
set were generated using a cycled design from the original fractional factorial design. In the
researcher selected questionnaire, a blocking strategy was used to reduce the number of choicetasks given to each respondent. In the respondent selected questionnaire prepared experimental
designs were used as templates as shown in Table 1. Respondents were advised that they could
choose to include any number or type of attributes in their choice decision. The one-on-one
interview survey took place at 4 villages in Prek Thnot community was conducted between Marchand April of 2012 with the total of 324 local community participants from local community, local
authorities include forest administration, park ranger and commune council. At first, respondents
received general information about the characteristics and management of community with posters,
maps, and photos of main rattan activities including rattan harvesting technique, nursery
management, rattan enrichment planting and large water birds and mammals captured by cameraⒸ ISERD89

IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2013) 4-1

traps in the national park. Following this, the second part of the survey included choice modelingquestions. The five attributes with four levels use to create choice sets using a 45 orthogonal main
effects design (Louvier et al., 2000), which produced 25 choice sets that were blocked into 5
versions of 5 choice sets (see Table 1). Finally, the questionnaire elicited information about nonattribute variables such as sex, age, education, income, attitude, perception and the main threat of
biodiversity conservation.
The choice Modeling (CM) technique requires respondents to choose only one among three
options from each of several sets. The resulting statistical model predicts choice behavior as afunction of the attributes and level that identify the different choice set. According to Lancaster(1966),  CM  is  consistent  with  Lancaster’s  theory  in  which  consumption  choices  are  defined  by  the  utility or value that is derived from the attributes of a particular good and random utility theory,
which describes discrete choices in a utility. The relationship of this variable can be introduced byassuming that the relationship between utility and characteristics follows a linear path, and byassuming that the error terms are distributed according to a double leg distribution; the choiceprobabilities have a convenient closed-form solution known as the multinomial logit model (MNL).
The conditional logit model used in this study is presented below. Because CE involves selection of
a substitute policy from several alternatives on the basis of the random utility model (Ben-Akiva
and Lerman, 1989), it can be expressed in equations, as shown below: When the i-th respondent
selects j from the set of alternatives, C, the utility uij can be defined by Eq. (1):uij vij  H ij

(1)where νij denotes the observable portion of the utility and εij indicates error term. When the i-th
respondent selects j, the utility uij of the selected alternative j is higher than the utility uik of theother alternatives, and its probability can be defined by Eq. (2):S ij

Pr(uij ! uik ; k  C )(2)

Pr(vij  H ij ! vik  H ik ; k  C )Pr(vij  vik ! H ik  H ij ; k  C )If this equation is subjected to total differentiation, deeming the utility level unchanged (dv = 0)
and fixing the attribute xk (other than attribute xj) also at the initial level, the amount of WTP for
one unit increase of attribute xj can be defined as follows in Eq. (3):MWTPx jdp
dx j

§ wv ·¸¨¨ wx ¸
j ¹©

§ wv ·¨¨ wp ¸
¸
©
¹



Ej
Ep

(3)

In  this  way,  MWTP  following  a  change  in  the  alternative  policy’s  level  can  be  calculated.
The Attributes with four levels such as Non Rattan Coverage (RC), Sustainable Rattan
Harvesting (SRH), Forest Management for REDD+ Benefit from government or donors, Increase
Endangered Species Conservation (IESC) and the price. The attributes for the C option were codedwith zero values for each of the attributes and the alternative specific constants (ASC) were equal
to 1 when either A or B option was selected. The Choice data of the conditional logit model andmarginal effects were analyzed using LIMDEP 8.0 NLOGIT 4.0 (Greene, 2002).
Table 1 Attributes and levels used in the choice models
Attributes
Rattan Coverage (RC)
Sustainable Rattan Harvesting(SNH)
Forest Management for REDD+
Benefit (FMRB)
Increase Endanger Species
Conservation (IESC)
Price

LevelsBasic Level
0 Seedling
500,000 canes

Level 1
10,000 Seedlings
19 million canes

Level 2
15,000 Seedlings
23 million canes

Level 320,000 Seedlings
28 million canes

0%

20%

30%

40%

5 species

10 species

15 species

20 species

USD30

USD50

USD70

USD90

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IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2013) 4-1

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 2 shows the respondent profiles. Almost 55% were male and about 45% were female. The
majority of local communities were between the ages of 31-40 years (28.40%) and 41-50 years(25.31%). The lowest percentage was age of under 25 and over 51 years old. A high percentage of
respondents were farmers with the total almost 50%, followed by fisherman (28.70%), andgovernment staff (10.80%). The educational level of local community was very low with majority ofthem being between Grades 1 to 6, which accounted for almost 42%. More than 30% of interviewees
were uneducated. Nearly 90% of respondents were under Grade 9. Most of people living in remoteareas were strongly dependent on using natural resource as their income was low. Almost 60% ofthem had incomes between 51 USD to 100 USD and almost a quarter of respondents had incomes
below 50 USD. Almost 85 % were below 100 USD. The percentage of local community who werewilling to pay for sustainable rattan management and species conservation in the park was nearly
93% (302 respondents) and only about 7% of them were not willingness to pay for these activities
because they felt that they did not get any benefit from these activities as shown in Table 3. The
amount of willingness to pay for community development was from 1 USD to 7 USD and relied on
the number of time rattan was collected. Harvesters always collected rattan in the dry season fromJanuary to April and October to December. In the rainy season people rarely collected rattan because
they were busy with their agricultural practice. About 30% of people were willing to pay for thecommunity trust fund which was 3 USD per collecting time meaning that they could collect about
600 rattan canes per one time. Meanwhile approximately 21% of them were willing to pay 5 USD.
Almost 30% (88 people) of respondents were willingness to pay from 1 USD to 2 USD and only 11%of them preferred to pay between 6 USD to 7 USD.
The ASC found statically significant with positive sign implying that all attributes included in
the CE capture all systematic determinant of alternative choice. Most of attributes of major
activities contributing to sustainable rattan management were found to be statistically significant at
the 1 and 5% level. Table 4 reveals the estimate of coefficients of alternative specific constant;sustainable rattan harvesting; increase endangered species for conservation, and price were
statically significant at 1% level, while rattan coverage found statistically significant at the 5%
level. Only the attribute of forest management for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and
Degradation (REDD+) benefit was not statistically significance.
Table2 Demographic information of respondents
Category
Male
FemaleAge
Under 25
26-30
31-40
41-50
51-60
Over 60
Occupation
FarmerFishermen
Government Staff
Student
Education Level
Under 1
Grade 1-6
Grade 7-9
Grade 11-12
Over Grade 12
IncomeUnder USD50
USD51-USD100
USD101- USD 200
USD201- USD 300
USD301-USD400
Source: Survey Data
GenderⒸ ISERD

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Number
178
146
48
52
92
82
38
12
159
93
35
37
108
135
53
20
8
80
193
43
6
2

Percent (%)
54.94
45.06
14.81
16.05
28.40
25.31
11.73
3.70
49.07
28.70
10.80
11.42
33.33
41.67
16.36
6.17
2.47
24.69
59.57
13.27
1.85
0.62

IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2013) 4-1

The marginal willingness to pay for sustainable rattan management is shown Table 5.
Interestingly, the results revealed that the local community was willing to pay the most for rattan
coverage (rattan enrichment planning) with the total of around 18 US$ per year; thus, the total
amount of financial contributions from villagers for enrichment planting was estimated to be
15,000 US$ per year if all community members were willingness to pay this amount. Their second
preferences were to pay for increasing endangered species for conservation, followed bysustainable rattan harvesting. The positive sign of these attributes indicated that probably the
respondents were probably interested in enjoying these activities and the negative sign of priceindicated  that  the  price  could  affect  respondents’  choice.
Table 3 Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Rattan Management
Category
WTP
Amount of WTP

Number
302
22
37
51
92
25
64
16
17

Yes
No
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Percent
93.21
6.79
12.25
16.89
30.46
8.28
21.19
5.29
5.63

Source: Survey Data

Table 4 Conditional logic results
Variables
Coeff.
Alternative Specific Constants
1.2149***Rattan Coverage
0.1097**
Sustainable Rattan Harvesting-0.0057***
Forest Management for REDD+ Benefit
0.0010
Increase Endangered Species for Conservation-0.0135***
PRICE-1.7040***
Parameters
6
Observations
1620
Log-livelihood-1716.98
Note: ***, **,* indicate statistical significance at 1%, 5%, 10%
Source: Survey Data

Std.Err.
0.13450.05560.00180.00250.00500.1792T-statistic
9.03701.9750-3.2030
0.4270-2.6860-9.5070

P-value
0.00000.04830.00140.66900.00720.0000

Table 5 MWTP of sustainable rattan management from multinomial logit modeling
Variables
Attribute
ASC
Alternative Specific Constants
BRC
Rattan Coverage
BSRH
Sustainable Rattan Harvesting
BFMRB
Forest Management for REDD+ Benefit
BIESC
Increase Endangered Species for Conservation
Source: Survey Data (95% confidence interval)

MWTP (USD)
71.2969 (44.9447, 97.6491)
18.6929 (7.8031, 29.5826)-0.3345 (-0.6873, -0.0183)
0.0587 (-0.4313, 0.5487)-0.7923 (-1.7723, 0.1877)

CONCLUSION
This study presents results from empirical application of choice experiment to valuation ofsustainable rattan management. The choice experiment aimed at identifying the preferences andbehaviors of local community and all stakeholders toward all activities for sustainable rattan
management both inside and outside protected areas. Each attribute that was found to bestatistically significant should be helpful to policy makers to see the appreciation of forest
dependent people for managing their resources. Additionally, the results showed that nearly 94% of
respondents were willing to pay for harvesting their resources and sustainable rattan managementin their communities with the majority of 3 USD per collection time. Thus, the government andⒸ ISERD

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other stakeholders can use this approach for better management of rattan and species conservation
for the benefit of poverty alleviation in rural economy.
In managerial terms, several implications for the planning and managing effectively from theresults obtained in this study. First, it was observed that enrichment planting is the first preference
so that they are keen on restoring and rehabilitation of their resources especially rattan. Second, it
was also observed that their marginal willingness to pay value is 18.30 USD, 0.33 USD, 0.0587
USD and 0.7923 USD per month, respectively. It means that the local community and stakeholders
are appreciating the benefits from sustainable rattan management. Third, among policy circle andthe wide public, for long-term sustainability there is a need to look outside the public sector for
additional funding for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection. Fourth, it is evident
that the primary target should be the improvement of sustainable rattan management for the benefit
of both conservation species and improve their living standard. Fifth, although sustainable
management provides insufficient funds for the conservation and management activities suggested,
the investigation of the local community shows the appreciation of the non-market value of all
attributes for sustainable rattan management. Finally, local communities are strongly support in theparticipating of rattan management and these results should be contribute to the decision makers todefine appropriated policy before implementing any projects.
Several research topics could follow up from this study in order to provide clearly insights into
the application of CE especially investigating the effects of payment to revolving fund and thebenefit from REDD+.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to gratefully acknowledge to Professor Dr. Mitsuhiro Terauchi at Tokyo University ofAgriculture, and Professor Dr. Mitsuyasu Yabe at Kyushu University, Mr. Thibault Ledecq, WWF
Cambodia Programme Manager, and Dr. Charles M. Peters and Dr. Andrew Henderson from the
New York Botanical Garden for their valuable comments, suggestions, discussion, and providing
some materials for research. I am grateful to the dedicated members of rattan team, WWF staff,
park rangers, park director, forest administration, authorities and local community for their support
during data collecting. I would like to also gratefully acknowledge Tokyo University of Agriculture
and SEARCA for sponsoring and helping various procedures required during my staying in Japan.
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