Investigating urban residents’ utilization patterns and financial contribution to parks and protected areas in Vietnam: Evidence from Bayesian mindsponge mindspongeconomics

Climate change has increasingly exerted an adverse effect on natural ecosystems and biodiversity. To be specific, one million of the world’s estimated eight million species of flora and fauna are in danger of extinction. In order to resolve the problem, a novel approach is to build an eco-surplus culture in which a group of people share a set of pro-environmental attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors to mitigate anthropogenic environmental impacts. In this sense, this study employs a culture-based approach to examines the antecedents of the utilization and financial contribution of urban dwellers to public and national parks where a variety of plants and animals are conserved. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Mindspongeconomics to conduct analysis on 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we found that the frequency of visiting national park and of consuming bushmeat, the intention to visit a national park and age positively affect the willingness to contribute financially to transplantation projects in the public park. Meanwhile, having trees in the house and frequently visiting national park leads to a higher probability of people donating to conservation projects in the national park. These findings reinforce the potential of an eco-surplus culture in generating finance for conservation places that are important to curb biodiversity loss, and thus helps policy-makers to devise more suitable policies regarding urban planning and resources allocation nationwide and beyond.