• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.787-798
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• 2011

An arboretum is defined as a collection of facilities that conserve plant species by surveying, collecting, and proliferating and preserving the plants in nature, perform diverse researches on plants and display the plants in exhibition spaces or outdoors as well as provide the public with educational programs and refreshment spaces according to the laws concerned. The public, however, recognizes the exhibition and education functions on plants of arboretum more importantly compared with the roles to survey, collect, and proliferate plants as regulated by the laws. In particular, arboretum plays a role to offer a pivotal educational place in urban area where the public can obtain an hands-on experience and understanding on a wide range of plant species and natural environment. The study aims to estimate the non market environmental values of Daegu Arboretum operated by Daegu Metropolitan City government by using the Contingent Valuation Methods (CVM), which yields the current monetary estimates for the arboretum. The value estimation was undertaken by using the Double-Bound Dichotomous Choice (DBDC) method, and each estimated value was derived from respective functions based on a logit distribution known to include relatively stable estimates according to the shape of the distribution. Considering the statistical fitness test results, the author estimated the amounts of the Willingness To Pay (WTP) such as mean WTP of 12,718 KRW, median WTP of 11,033 KRW, and truncated mean WTP of 11,468 KRW, which represented the annual recreational values per a person visiting Daegu Arboretum respectively. The analysis showed that Daegu Arboretum created the annual environmental values which were estimated to be approximately 16 to 19 billion KRW. The study also has an implication that the valuation method for the environment of Daegu Arboretum may be effectively applied for estimating the values of other types of environmental goods by altering the locations or goods to be analyzed.