Quantifying Ecological Well-Being Loss under Rural–Urban Land Conversion: A Study from Choice Experiments in China

Rural–urban land conversion has led to the degradation of agricultural system ecological services, and therefore human ecological well-being. There is a need to transform the non-marketed value of ecosystem services provision into a monetary loss of ecological well-being in rural–urban land conversion, which could serve as a basis for ecological compensation. In this paper, a choice experiment method is adopted to investigate the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of rural and urban residents in six cities of three provinces selected from different regions in China. The results reveal that the attributes reflecting the ecological well-being of rural and urban residents are experiencing different degrees of decline. Two attributes, health and security, show the most obvious decline among all ecological well-being attributes for urban residents. In view of stakeholders, rural residents are facing a greater decline in ecological well-being than urban residents, which is mainly driven by their different linkages and interactions with the agro-ecosystem. In terms of regional comparisons, residents in the central region (Hubei Province) of China are subject to the sharpest decline in ecological well-being, followed by those living in the western region (Guizhou Province) and the eastern region (Guangdong Province). These differences are basically determined by their land resource conditions and socioeconomic circumstances. This paper argues that it is pressing to establish an ecological compensation mechanism to regulate rural–urban land conversion and maintain human ecological well-being.