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Bamboo forests provide multiple ecosystem services (ES) and benefits to human well-being. But degradation and deforestation will deprive communities of those ES and benefits. This study intended to estimate households’ willingness to pay (WTP) in daily labor for the conservation of lowland bamboo forest (LBF) ecosystem and examine the determinants of their WTP. Multistage random sampling design was employed to generate 199 sample respondent households from four Kebeles that are inside the conservation area proposed by sustainable bamboo forest management guideline. Written pretest and main survey questionnaires were administered with face-to-face interview by trained enumerators to generate primary data. Double bounded dichotomous choice format contingent valuation (CV) was employed as WTP value elicitation method. Bivariate probit model was used to specify the general econometric model assuming that mean WTP for first bid offer and mean WTP for second bid offer are equal with overall mean WTP of households. Direct estimation of coefficients of the model were obtained from the maximum likelihood estimation method using the doubleb STATA command. All respondents were found WTP for the conservation of LBF ecosystem. The result obtained also shows that the mean WTP with no control variables is approximately equal to 19.11 man-days per year while WTP computed at average value of the control variables is 19.77 man-days per year and both are significant at 1% significant level. The regression result indicate that sex, education and income of the household head have positive significant effect on WTP at a 1% significant level. Land tenure security, expectation of conservation, family size and TLU were found to be significant determinants of households WTP for LBF ecosystem conservation at a 5% significant level. The signs of the coefficients of land tenure security and expectation of conservation variables are both positive as hypothesized. While the signs for family size and TLU variables are both negative. This study recommends stakeholders to implement conservation of LBF ecosystem since there is high public desire and labor for this environmental development in Abramo area. This study also recommends to use the interval data model and the doubleb command in other valuations for the efficiency gain and simplicity to analyses the results.
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