Heterogeneous Value of Water: Empirical Evidence in South Korea

Anthropogenic pressures have exacerbated self-sustaining river services, and growing concerns over sustaining river system become global problematic issues that lead us to implement river restoration projects. Of those projects, governing diverse needs and desires from stakeholders for those who have various water values are key elements of identifying the success of the project. In fact, the Korean government has had concern over restoring the rivers which brings to construct 16 weirs in four major rivers and may fail to achieve main goal of the project, which is to ameliorate water quality. In this study, principle component analysis and multinomial logit model were executed to investigate major socioeconomic variables to influence water values in terms of sustainability in Korea. Evitable evidences have been found that age, income, education level, and city dwelling are the most effective variables to estimate water values. In addition, a monotonous water development project and a myopic view could cause major dejection across the nation and may lead to the failure of water governance. Unfortunately, the latter may be observed in Korea as one of the reasons for the recent amplification of major conflicts.