6.1. Discussion
The research results showed that institutional trust, PES cognition and support attitude significantly affect WTP, a finding in agreement with previous results. However, the inn operators’ perceived benefit showed no significant impact on their WTP, in contrast to previous studies. Thus, we discuss this significant finding in the following three points: (1) cultural and place identity, (2) operators’ ability, and (3) professional education.
(1) The operators have not strong cultural identity with Bai indigenous people. The PES fees paid by tourists are mainly intended to limit the impact of environment damage on hedonic interests, but the inn operators are no longer tourists. During the early years, many tourists travelled to Dali before they become inn operators. Most of them rented a local farmhouse and decorated their inn, resulting in an intimate, quaint, and attractive house with a relaxing home-away-from-home atmosphere [
81]. Cultural identity influences their lifestyle and action, because they like the lifestyle of the Bai indigenous people residents and agree with the Bai culture around Erhai Lake. Their inns tend to be lifestyle-oriented toward those who prefer to enjoy an idyllic life for long time.
After 2014 more and more people begin to invest in inns to make a profit, who are no longer the gold collars from Beijing and Shanghai, but small investors from many below average cities. The regional distribution of the operators could explain this, the main proportion of operators from outside eastern of Yunnan, including western, central, northeastern provinces (the numbers of provinces in each region is 11, 6, 13, and 4) is 14.7%, 14.7%, 16.3% and 6.8%. But Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen all megacities are located in the eastern province. For the inn operator, from the lifestyle of a few people had become a way of livelihood. Many people were moving in Erhai Lake area not in order to live pastorally, but to speculate on rising room rates in the short term. Profit-oriented operators tend to be a significant proportion of operators and they are reluctant to pay for ecosystem services.
The operators were short of place attachment in Erhai Lake and Dali city. In other studies, local community members are willing to pay for ecosystem services because of their local identity and attachment [
82]. More than 60% of the inn operators are from outside Yunnan province, and the proportion of investors outside Yunnan province is even higher, exceeding 90%. Few of them consider themselves to be part of the local community.
With a low sense of local identity and place attachment, they were described as the residential guest—“New Dali people”—an intermediary between the host and the guest [
52]. The gap between the “New Dali people” and “Old Dali people” is too wide, two kinds people are too hard to weld into a community. For example, schools that these New Dali people’s children go to are not local traditional public schools with local people, but are western-style, micro private schools with few local people. For instance, Mao Mao Guo Er, are led by western popular psychology theory and they provide project-based learning [
83]. Operators and their children live in their own social communities with low local attachment, these operators are not so keen on protecting Erhai Lake.
(2) The operators perceived less direct benefits that they had gained, and a lack of ability to connect to PES. The inn operators’ capabilities are limited, including their strategic, financial, and management. Large and medium-sized enterprises can form expert teams, and are significantly more sophisticated than individual inn operators in terms of policy background and professional knowledge. They can understand PES relative to the overall strategy of the company and corporate social responsibility, and clearly know that PES is important for the development of their enterprises. As a result, there is a stronger WTP for intrinsic compensation and the overall willingness to participate is stronger. Enterprises with a large scale and strong capital are more willing to participate in PES [
83]. However, inn operators are different from large and medium-sized enterprise managers. The inn is a small micro-enterprise, and the whole team for an inn generally does not exceed five (investors tend to be 1–2 persons, management team tend to be 2–3 individuals). Such a management team consists mostly of young adults without professional training; only about 40% of them have received undergraduate education. These operators are limited by their own intrinsic cognitive levels, and consequently the PES payment willingness expression does not reflect rational business behavior and team decision-making behavior; instead it is personal emotional expression.
Excessively high commercial risks exceeding their abilities and the high cost of protection fees for inn construction may disrupt the intrinsic link between the perceived interests and the WTP. Many inns are funded and built with personal loans and other methods, and the amount of investment is relatively large. Some inns need to invest up to tens of millions of CNY and owners are eager to recover costs in the short term. Given the special land ownership system in China, the leases of the farmhouse tended to be mostly 20 years. Therefore, investors bear a great deal of risk. During operation, inns are faced with the cost of wages, rent, etc., as well as the intensified market competition and other uncertainties. Rents of farm houses have risen ten times in five years in some places.
According to ELRPF, an inn with 10 lake-view rooms will pay an annual protection fee of 240,000 CNY, accounting for about 10% of operating income. Moreover, ELRPF policy designers did not consider other factors such as the room occupancy rates and price fluctuations, consequently increased economic risks fell completely on inn operators. The majority of the operators surveyed stated that the proposed standards imposed by the government had exceeded their financial ability to pay. Of the operators surveyed, 33% said that they could not afford it. Most operators are willing to pay 1–3% of their operating income, which is far lower than the existing proposed standards of about 10%.
In the survey, about 40% of respondents were undergraduate degree holders; thus it is difficult for many to recognize the intrinsic nature of ELRPF. Most operators have very limited knowledge of the relationship among the received benefit, ecosystem services and PES. Only 5% expressed full understanding of the relationship, while 28% of the respondents said that they had never heard of it. The different level of understanding and different views of perceived benefits inevitably will make it difficult for the inn operators to accept resource protection fees, thus affecting their WTP.
Local operators are less willing to pay PES payments; this situation is in contrast to findings in other studies where local residents make larger payments [
84]. That local operators tend to have low capacities low competition with foreign operators (outside Dali), may be a main factor in this study. From previous analysis (
Table 12), the level of education is an important factor affecting the WTP for PES. Most of the local operators are peasants with a relatively low level of education. 20% of them have completed undergraduate studies, while the rate of foreign operators is 53%. Non-local operators tend to have large capital investment, while most local operators only operated the inn using only their own available funds, limiting their capacity for capital investment. In terms of management performance, foreign operators already exhibit some characteristics of corporate organization, while the local operators still use the family as the business unit. The profitability of local operators may be less than foreign operators which might affect the willingness of local operators to pay.
During the investigation, many local operators stated that they had lived around Erhai Lake for generations and made a living from it (fishing or farming around the lake). Foreign operators at Erhai Lake have taken local people’s resources and land. In addition, the larger inns operated by foreign inn operators result in greater lake pollution. With their higher prices, the foreign operators can enjoy greater profits; thus, in the local inn operators’ eyes they should take more responsibility for Erhai Lake. These illustrate the ability of local people to influence their mentality.
(3) The operator is the broker of ecosystem services without professional education, and PES can link the tourist’s enjoyment and loss of local residents, that is understandable and a common way. However, in order to reduce the difficulty of the local government, the ELRPF system had been increased for operators as the broker of ecosystem services (
Figure 5). Due to the addition of new stakeholders to the PES system, the complex eco-economic relationship of ELRPF is more difficult to be acknowledged and be accepted by public widely.
The ELRPF has transformed the causal relationship between the operators’ economic benefits, the local residents’ loss, the tourists’ experience, and the government’s responsibility into simple economic relationships, while obscuring the direct correspondence between ecosystem services and economic compensation of PES system. This result may affect inn operators’ perceptions of perceived benefits, seriously affecting the willingness of inn operators to pay for PES.
The operators’ perceived benefits provided by Erhai Lake ecosystem services are far less understandable and measurable than that from water utilities [
1]. Most of operators agreed that the lake does bring them material and immaterial benefits; 65% of the respondents thought that the lake’s landscape has increased their room rates by more than 50%, and 70% of the respondents said that they enjoy the local natural environment. However, the generation of perceived benefits has certain preconditions, ecosystem components, and scientific principles, and most operators do not recognize the characteristics of ecosystem services and Hedonic price.
The ELRPF did not explain clearly how to use the funds obtained, further aggravating operator’s comprehension of the ELRPF. The operators worried that may be used by local government for other purposes instead of conserving Erhai Lake, which may also affect their WTP, and 37% of the respondents said that the main reason of unwilling to pay the fee was that they did not believe that the government could reasonably use it. Some operators believed that operating income is the result of their own investments and operations, and they had fulfilled their responsibilities by paying various taxes and fees, and protection of Erhai Lake should be the government’s responsibility. In addition, these inn operators encountered various irregularities from the local government during the management process during the construction and operation of inns, which also exacerbated the operator’s aversion to the introduction of the policy and further affected WTP.
Most operators believed that inn operation is either an individual lifestyle choice or involves speculation with rising room rates. Erhai Lake’s ecosystem services tend to be ignored because the conditions that generate them are complex, indirect, non-consumptive and difficult to measure or characterize. In the survey, about 40% of respondents were undergraduate students or above; thus, it is difficult for many to recognize the intrinsic nature of ELRPF. Most operators have very limited knowledge of the relationship among the received benefit, ecosystem services and PES. Only 5% expressed full understanding of the relationship, while 28% of the respondents said that they had never heard of it. The different level of understanding, and different views of perceived benefits, inevitably will make it difficult for the inn operators to accept resource protection fees, thus affecting their WTP.
6.2. Policy Implications
The results of this study have shown that perceived benefit is not a core factor in the formulation of PES systems for inn operators. To make a PES policy widely supported and effective, it is necessary to make use of the characteristics and beneficiaries of ecosystem services and to take targeted measures. Two major results of these findings need to be considered:
(1) The components of the PES system should be simple, and the policy design should reflect the direct relationship of PES. In the ELRPF, fees shall be levied on the economic benefits obtained by the operators, but not collected from tourists who gained ecosystem services, making the operators the direct payer of ecosystem services. This approach may stem from the policy designers’ concern that charging fees directly to tourists for water protection may have a negative financial impact on tourists and reduce the number of tourists coming to Dali. Such a thing happened when Lijiang in Yunnan and Fenghuang in Hunan, which are two famous ancient towns, tried to levy protection fees from tourists, causing great controversy among tourists. Moreover, the large number of tourists might lead to a high cost of the collection of ELRPF from them.
Collecting PES from tourists may reduce conflicts. In fact, if ELRPF is directly charged to tourists instead of operators, then the supply and demand relationship between users and providers of ecosystem services will be clarified. For example, if the resource protection fee (ecosystem service) is superimposed on the room rate price (accommodation service), the levy scheme may be relatively easy to implement. With this approach, the perceived benefits, hedonic price, value of ecosystem services to tourists are more direct and logical. The causal relationship between ecoservice acquisition and economic expenditure would be clear, and fee levy would be relatively easy to achieve. Moreover, the payment of PES by tourists is a subjective response based on experience and aesthetics, and there is no problem of operating costs and risks.
(2) Payment for ecosystem services is difficult for the broker of ecosystem services voluntarily. Other types of PES, related to the use of water resources is directly utilized and tourism in national parks, the relation of between ecosystem services and economic income are clear. The utilization of water resources of a basin, protection is in the upper, uses is in the lower, the relationship is clear and direct [
1,
85]. In some national parks, the numbers of franchise tourism bunnies operations, there are management measures such as access control systems. Under such conditions, there are only a few buyers and providers of ecosystem services, and PES can be resolved through negotiations and other market methods.
Compared with other PES systems, there are not two kinds of stakeholders in the ELRPF, but three stakeholders. Famers are the provider, and tourists are the buyers, and operators are the brokers of ecosystem services at Erhai Lake. For brokers their goal is to maximize profits, they will try their best to achieve the lowest cost and the most spread. It is very difficult for them to voluntarily pay PES, and the PES policy is also achieved hardly through a market approach.
At Erhai Lake the number of small-scale inns is numerous, the amount of providers, buyers, and brokers of ecosystem services is also huge, and they are intertwined there. There is a possibility that some operators might take “free rides.” During construction and operation periods, some inns’ construction waste and sewage has been discharged secretly into the lake. For the use of landscape resources in open land, and with a huge number of stakeholders, a PES system is not simple, and PES must be enforced by the government.