Modeling Preferences of Lake Urmia Basin Residents concerned with its restoration: An Application of Contingent Ranking

Abstract Downward trend of environmental situation of Lake Urmia has led to the formation of multiple organizations and working groups aimed at restoring Lake Urmia. Success of the restoration solutions, to great extent, depends on the acceptance of them by the stakeholders and level of their contribution. Therefore, contingent ranking approach has been utilized in this study to explore the heterogenous preferences of basin residents. The acquired information was collected by 382 questionnaires completed directly by citizens of 13 districts in 2015 and scale-adjusted multilevel latent class model was used for analysing data in the full ranking format. The results identified four lower-level classes, two grand glasses and two scale classes which confirmed that socioeconomic characteristics, geophysical characteristics and also, existence of uncertainty in the responses, are three impressive factor in modelling preferences. Estimating willingness to pays diagnosed climate regulation and prevention from salt storms as the most important attribute for the respondents. Calculating compensating variation indicated that in the case of full restoration of Lake Urmia, over 222 million Rials to 5 billion Rials annually will be added to households welfare. Consolidation of dust and sand drifts and plants adapted to local conditions, are highly recommended.