Valuing community awareness and willingness to pay for marine environment management: empirical analysis in coastal central region of Vietnam

Abstract Vietnam is a country with strengths in marine resources and economy. The coast provides habitats and livelihoods for millions of households but is in decline due to economic activity and climate change. This study’s purpose is to evaluate the awareness of people in the central coastal provinces of Vietnam about marine environmental values and their willingness to pay for the management and improvement of marine environmental quality. The study applied a binary random assessment model and surveyed 980 households in 4 coastal provinces to evaluate community payments. The results show that people have good awareness of tangible environmental values, associated with life and livelihood. They also highly agree with protecting marine environmental values and emphasize passing these values on to future generations. Community payment for sea environment management was estimated at 420 thousand/household/year in parametric model and 398 VND thousand/household/year in non-parametric model. Bid level, income and education are main factors affecting people’s ability to pay. The study also proposes implications for marine environmental management including strengthening community awareness and capacity, establishing financial mechanisms for community-led conservation at the local level, and integrating education marine environmental values for high school students to aim for sustainability in community awareness and behavior.