2021 Volume 92 Issue 3 Pages 361-369
To quantify what attributes of wastewater treatment systems are preferred by pig farmers, a discrete choice experiment was conducted by a questionnaire survey of pig farmers in four prefectures, Japan, in the present study. Farmers were offered a series of choice sets including the following five attributes of wastewater treatment systems: ability to improve water quality, ability to remove odor, technical difficulty, cost, and ability to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As the results, the farmers showed great preference for “ability to improve water quality”, indicating that pig farmers are strongly aware of the temporary effluent standards under the Water Pollution Prevention Act as expected. Moreover, farmers showed slightly positive preference for “ability to reduce GHG emissions” that is not currently subject to regulation. In the future, in order to improve farmers’ willingness to pay for the attributes of wastewater treatment systems related to environmental improvement, it is suggested that it is essential to further inform farmers of the importance of environmental protection and present the specific measures.
