Factors affecting household perception of wetland biodiversity conservation in West Bengal, India.

The objective of present paper is to identify and analyze various socio-economic, livelihood and demographic factors that are likely to influence the house perception of conservation of wetland biodiversity in the Indian state of West Bengal. For this the study uses the primary data collected from 233 randomly sampled households in three wetlands. The data was gathered during the period 2011. Ordered logit model was employed to estimate the determinants of household perception of biodiversity score in the wetlands. The results indicate that economic value of wetland products collected by households found to be an important determinant to higher household perception of biodiversity score. Poorer households who are critically dependent on wetlands for their daily livelihoods activities, households having less number of month food insecurity, are more likely to have higher biodiversity perception score. Households that are using wetland for irrigation are more likely to have perceived higher biodiversity perception. Wetlands that are having less number of active village level institutions are having higher biodiversity score. The results clearly suggest that biodiversity conservation is critical for the promotion of human livelihoods and at the same time it is also necessary to maintain ecological balance so that wetland ecosystem can continue to supply ecosystem services.