Consumer’s WTPe for Grass-fed Meat and Its Implications in Sustaining Grassland for Degrading Karst Region of Guizhou, China

The Guizhou province in southern China is a typical karst region that is highly affected by environmental degradation and needs to implement sustainable ecological restoration programs.This paper first conducted a willingness to pay extra (WTP e ) survey for provisioning services of grassland based on consumers' preference to grass-fed cattle or lamb production process to check public concerns over rural grassland and the potential of compensation foundation collection.Results show that: 1) the WTP e for grass-fed beef production was RMB 16.51±4.81/kg,or for grass-fed lamb was RMB 34.24±7.37/kgwhich was not trivial to land use decision making; 2) as much as 83.6% of urban citizens acknowledge their preference for grass-fed meat production than high-energy-diet meat and 55.7% even declare they would shift their eating habit from traditional meat of pork to grass-fed meat like beef or lamb; 3) respondents with middle income and moderately educated level showed dramatically higher WTP e for grass-fed beef than did other groups.4) the maximum total consumer's WTP e for grass-fed meat production was predicted to RMB 10.38 x 10 9 per year in the target province which equals to a capacity in sustaining 1.15 x 10 6 ha grassland in condition of 900 RMB per 1000 m 2 .This amount doubled current compensation per capital given by the government.This WTP e with intention to sustain grassland for meat production process has the capacity to transfer food safety demand of urban consumers to a guidance for rural land use behavior via their economic action.Through this mechanism, a control switch for ecological restoration can be built through the market to avoid overproduction or insufficient production of grass-fed meat.