Determinates of farmer’s preference for watershed ecosystem services: The case of Belesa districts, Amhara region of Ethiopia'

Watersheds provide diverse range of goods and services which are vital for the sustenance of human wellbeing. Despite the huge volume of watershed development work in the intervention sites, sustainable flow of benefits from the constructed structures stayed to be still an issue. This study aimed to analyze Determinates of farmers’ preference for watershed ecosystem services in East and West Belesa Districts, NorthWest Ethiopia. From the two districts, a total of 501 households were selected by using multistage sampling technique. Essential ecosystem services were used to develop and list watershed intervention list of options. The intervention options were created using choice experiment method by employing a D-optimal choice design. The mixed logit result revealed that farmers preferred the inclusion of different ecosystem services such as improved livestock fodder, soil moisture and fertility, stabilized spring water flow, reduced soil erosion and increased crop productivity in watershed interventions. However, the preference of the services was governed by the interaction of farmers’ socioeconomic settings and attitudinal backgrounds. For instance, households with larger family size exceptionally valued the importance of enhanced soil fertility and moisture more than anything else. Similarly, farmers who hold relatively larger farms showed little interest for interventions striving to cut soil erosion at most. More importantly, farmers were found to give special emphasis for feed development and springs enhancement services over the rest of the ecosystem services included in the intervention menus. This implies that farmers give more preference to the two scarce resources of water and fodder more than other values even to those emphasized services aspired in the de-facto interventions which are reduced soil erosion and increased crop productivity. This calls for the need to revisit the undergoing interventions in the areas geared toward more livestock feed and water sources development.