Willingness to Pay for Preserving National Park Biodiversity: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper employs a stated preference environmental valuation method i.e. Contingent Valuation Method to estimate the willingness to pay for the conservation of the Dachigam National Park as well as value estimates crucial to the development of the park acquisition and management policy. A contingent valuation study is conducted with 301 visitors and the data are analysed using the binary logit model. Results show that the majority of the tourists (benefitted from the use values of the park) were willing to pay (WTP) for its improvement. Respondents' willingness to pay for the conservation of the park ranges from Rs. 110 to Rs. 140 per year with a mean of around Rs. 125 per year. With the use of the benefits transfer method, this case study is expected to provide policy-makers, corporate players, stakeholders with useful information for the conservation of biodiversity in the Indian sub-continent, as well as in other countries.

Smallholder Households’ Willingness to Pay for Conservation of Ecosystem Services of Alitash National Park, Ethiopia

“…The study result reveals literate households' have 1.53% more probability to accept the offered bid values for the park conservation improvement compared to illiterate respondents keeping other factors constant. This finding is consistent with the findings of (Adams et al, 2008;Bhat & Sinha, 2016).…”

“…According to Assefa et al, (2017) more than 1,812 national parks were built before in Africa. National parks are crucial for conservation and preservation of biodiversity and provision of other benefits associated with the maintenance of ecological integrity (Bhat, 2016;Bhat & Sinha, 2016). Environmental resources provide significant contribution for human beings, plants and animals day to day activities (Endalew et al, 2018).…”

Willingness to Pay for Conservation of the Asian Elephant in Nakai Nam Theun National Protected Area in Laos

“…These outcomes collaborate with well-known the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) theories and similar types of outcomes stated by others in CVM research (e.g. Bhatt et al, 2014;Zambrano-Monserrate, 2020;Bhat et al, 2021). As expected, the coefficient of household monthly income was found positive, indicating that the likelihood of WTP for conservation of elephant attributes increases with increase in income.…”

Valuation and effective management of the Dal Lake's diverse ecosystem using choice experiment method

“…In recent years, several studies dealing with bio‐economic modelling of wetland ecosystems and studies related to ecological‐economic values using computer simulations have appeared (e.g., Chopra & Saroj, 2004). The available literature on the economic valuation of wetland ecosystems, especially wetland biological resources, and other relevant studies have focused on aspects of economic values, such as direct and indirect use values (Sharma et al, 2015; Gregg & Wheeler, 2018); people's WTP for conservation of wetland ecosystem attributes (Kwak et al, 2007; Akankali & Jamabo, 2012; Siew et al, 2015; Jayathilaka & Serasinghe, 2018); WTP for recreational benefits derived from wetland ecosystems (Khosravi & Salarpour, 2009; Azizi & Seyedan, 2014; Zarandi et al, 2019); WTP for specific economic, environmental and social attributes of wetlands and their determinants (Bhatt et al, 2014; Khan et al, 2019); and various conceptual, methodological and technical issues concerning the economic valuation of wetlands (Jiang et al, 2016), from diverse angles. In literature, both revealed preference and stated preference methods are used to value the environmental amenities provided by wetland ecosystems.…”