In order to conserve the coral reefs, seagrass beds and other marine habitats, neighboring countries along the Kuroshio Current are now carrying out community-based marine resource management, including fishery regulations, illegal fishing bans, and establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs). In this study, we used stated preference techniques to investigate the rural villagers' value of resource and environmental conservation taking the case of the San Miguel Island MPA in Bicol Region, Southern Luzon, Philippines. From the 1,035 households we randomly sampled for our baseline survey, we interviews for this 329 samples from Sagurong village where the MPA is situated, and from the neighboring village Rawis. We applied a non-parametric method to estimate the mean WTW and WTP values. The monetary equivalent of the average WTW is 15 times higher than the average WTP. A possible explanation is that the labor market in rural villages in developing countries is incomplete so villagers have a stronger preference for money than for time and may have expressed their WTP too little as compared with the monetary value of the WTW. The aggregate WTW value for the two villages is equivalent to having about 100 people watch and patrol the MPA per day. On the other hand, the aggregate WTP in Sagurong is equivalent to the monthly incentive of around 43 people if we use the current monthly incentive of the patrol group. Finally, we estimated volunteer work and payment behavior equations, and examined the sign directions of the factors specified to influence WTW and WTP. In both equations, the sign of the variables such as days proposed and amount of payment and income were consistent with economic theory, suggesting the internal validity of our results.

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Risk communication among stakeholders is the essential element behind decisions about risk management measures in the food safety field. However, risk communication has not always been favorably done. Slovic (1999) pointed out that unsuccessful risk management can be traced, in part, to a failure to appreciate the complex and socially determined nature of the concept "risk". The majority of risk perception studies with Socio-psychological models have focused on multi-dimensional characteristics of risk/hazard that have substantial influence on the subjective evaluation of risks. The identified factors of characteristics in these studies, however, cannot suitably explain the characteristics of food related risks. In this study, we re-investigated the factors that influence the perceived magnitude of food-related risks by a laddering method survey in Japan, Korea and the U.S.. The results show that the public have judged the high/low of risk level by 3 categories of factors: perceived risk/hazard characteristics, perceived personal factors and perceived social factors. Severity of damage to health, cause of illness, accumulation in body, benefit and natural/artificial origin were the major factors categorized in perceived risk/hazard characteristics. Perceived personal factors consist of experience, knowledge and association of terrible scene/image. Exposure to information and trust in government/experts were regarded as perceived social factors. A structural model of food-related risk perception might possibly be constructed by adding worldview and general trust to the above 3 factors. This model will be statistically analyzed in the continuous empirical cross-cultural studies.

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