Ensuring local support for protected areas is increasingly viewed as an important element of biodiversity conservation. This is often predicated on the provision of benefits from protected areas, and a common means of providing such benefits is tourism development. However, the relationship between receipt of tourism benefits and support for conservation has not been explored. This study examined local attitudes towards protected area tourism and the effects of tourism benefits on local support for Komodo National Park, Indonesia. Komodo National Park is a flagship for tourism in a region where protected areas are becoming increasingly visited and where local support for conservation has not been investigated. Results of a questionnaire survey revealed positive attitudes towards tourism and high support for conservation (93.7%), as well as a recognition that tourism is dependent upon the existence of the park. Positive attitudes towards tourism were positively related to the receipt of economic benefits, and to support for conservation. However, a positive relationship between receipt of tourism benefits and support for conservation was not identified, suggesting that benefits from protected area conservation make no difference to local support for conservation. Local people recognized distributional inequalities in tourism benefits, and the most common complaints were of local inflation and tourist dress code. To fully identify the impacts of protected area tourism, long-term studies of local attitudes alongside traditional economic and ecological assessments are recommended.Environmental Conservation 28 (2): 160-166

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Responsible tourism is emerging as a significant market trend in the UK as wider consumer market trends towards lifestyle marketing and ethical consumption spread to tourism. This paper reviews recent survey evidence about consumer attitudes towards the responsible and ethical aspects of the tourism they consume, and places this in the context of campaigns by Voluntary Service Overseas and Tearfund. Between 1999 and 2001 the percentage of UK holidaymakers aspiring to be willing to pay more for an ethical holiday increased by 7 per cent from 45 per cent to 52 per cent. The evidence for increasing consumer demand for responsible tourism is reported and the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications.

Protected areas are under increasing pressure to provide economic justification for their existence, particularly in developing countries where demand for land and natural resources is high. Nature-based tourism offers a mechanism to generate substantial benefits from protected areas for both governments and local communities, and ecotourism is increasingly promoted as a sustainable use of protected areas. The extent to which ecotourism offsets the costs of a protected area has rarely been examined. We used financial data from Komodo National Park, Indonesia, and a willingness-to-pay questionnaire of independent visitors to (1) examine the financial contribution of tourism in offsetting the costs of tourism and wider management and (2) assess the effect of hypothetical fee increases on park revenues, visitation patterns, and local economies. Although only 6.9% of park management costs were recovered, visitors were willing to pay over 10 times the current entrance fee, indicating a substantial potential for increased revenue. The potential negative effect of large fee increases on visitor numbers and the resultant effect on local economic benefits from tourism may limit the extent to which greater financial benefits from Komodo National Park (KNP) can be realized. Our results suggest that a moderate, tiered increase in entrance fees is most appropriate, and that partial revenue retention by KNP would help demonstrate the conservation value of tourism to both visitors and managers and has the potential to increase visitors' willingness to pay.Política Tarifaria para el Turismo en Areas Protegidas: Lecciones del Parque Nacional Komodo, Indonesia *