Evaluating non-user willingness to pay for a large-scale conservation programme in Amazonia: a UK/Italian contingent valuation study

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Horton ◽  
Giordano Colarullo ◽  
Ian J. Bateman ◽  
Carlos A. Peres

Contingent valuation (CV) is a popular method in economics for eliciting individuals' preferences for non-market environmental resources, but very few attempts have been made to apply it to distant environmental goods of global importance. This paper reports the results of a CV study in the UK and Italy, which evaluated non-users' willingness to pay for the implementation of a proposed programme of protected areas in Brazilian Amazonia. The main focus of the survey was the wealth of biodiversity in the region proposed for protection and the ecosystem services provided by such areas. Taking both countries together, respondents were willing to pay, on average, £30 (US$ 45.60) per household per annum to fund the implementation of a protection programme covering 5% of Brazilian Amazonia and £39 (US$ 59.28) per household per annum to fund a 20% programme. Aggregated across households, an annual fund to conserve 5% of Brazilian Amazonia as strictly protected areas could yield around £600 million (US$ 912 million) in the UK and a similar amount in Italy. It should be noted that respondents appeared to show a high degree of uncertainty in the bid decision process for such an unfamiliar and distant good, leading to questions as to the validity and reliability of results. Nevertheless, responses were non-random and systematically related to a range of socio-economic characteristics and attitudinal variables. Thus initiatives such as international financial transfers from wealthy developed countries to support the protection of threatened areas of global significance could attract widespread support in those countries.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 3041 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Witt

It can be challenging to set protected area entrance fees without information on how much visitors are willing to pay. It is particularly difficult for agencies managing multiple sites to set fees without conducting surveys at each location. In order to examine how willingness to pay estimates would vary across sites with distinctive profiles, 877 visitors at five Mexican protected sites (Calakmul, Cobá, Palenque, Sian Ka’an, and Yum Balam) were interviewed through double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys. The results suggest that visitors would be willing to pay higher entrance fees, with mean maximum willingness to pay estimates of 2.8–9.8 times current fees, ranging from US$15.70 to US$25.83. Visitor demand was found to be relatively inelastic, with aggregate fee rises of 26% estimated to result in a 5% decrease in visitation. These results suggest that there is room to raise revenues through moderate fee increases without a concomitant drop-off in visitation.


Author(s):  
Charisios Achillas ◽  
Christos Vlachokostas ◽  
Avraam Karagiannidis ◽  
Eftichios Sophocles Sartzetakis ◽  
Nicolas Moussiopoulos

Management of Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE also called e-waste) has become an issue of critical importance recently also in the frame of industrial ecology besides waste management per se, mostly due to their content in hazardous materials and the extensive implications of any intervention in a broad industrial spectrum. The effectiveness of any landfill diversion scheme depends on its acceptance by the local community and the industry, as well as adequate funding. This paper presents a contingent valuation approach in order to examine public environmental awareness and to assess the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the environmentally sound management of WEEE in Greece, based on a suitable, customized and easy-to-comprehend questionnaire. The survey revealed a still relative public ignorance on the subject and a reluctantly limited WTP. The latter is mostly triggered by the fact that respondents believed that associated expenses should be covered either by authorities or manufacturers (protest votes). However, based on the responses of those declaring a positive WTP, the average fee respondents are willing to pay exceeds the current recycling fee. Thus, existing recycling fees could be potentially increased in order to cover additional expenses for the development of infrastructure in areas not currently included in the national WEEE recycling program, as well as to provide the public with a dense network of disposal sites/bins in an effort to boost participation and WEEE recycling rates.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priscila Lopes ◽  
Sebastian Villasante

Ecosystems services (ES) provide food and recreation to humans, but are fast being degraded. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been proposed as a way to protect some of these ES, but decisions regarding what gets protection and what gets consumed can be a source of conflicts. One such example is the Fernando de Noronha MPA (Brazil), where there is a conflict between shark-directed tourism and fishers who would like to access the no-take part of the MPA during part of the year. A contingent valuation method (Willingness to Pay) was used to ascertain if tourists would accept compensating fishers for not disturbing the sharks during a specific period of the year, by adding a symbolic increase in the taxes they already pay to either visit the island or to visit the no-take part of the MPA. Tourists were open to this alternative (67-71%), regardless of the fee being paid. However, there was a slight tendency to reject the fee when the tourists saw sharks during their stay, suggesting that a closer contact with these animals triggered a less sympathetic attitude towards fishers, probably because they start seeing fishers as wrongdoers, even if this is the worst choice for conservation. Although such a hypothetical payment was easily accepted by the majority of the tourists and could represent an affordable solution to conflicts, convincing those who reject such social compensation, especially if based on an irrational choice, would be an important step for sharks and for the MPA as a whole.


2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Petrolia ◽  
Sanjoy Bhattacharjee ◽  
Darren Hudson ◽  
Cary W. Herndon

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-203
Author(s):  
Andrea Saayman ◽  
Melville Saayman

Abstract The research presented in this chapter determines the value that tourists on safari in protected areas in South Africa attach to elephant sightings and the relative importance of the elephant sighting compared with the other species in the Big Five. The study also determines whether tourists take the increased poaching of elephants - also in South Africa - into account when revealing their choice. Using information from five surveys conducted at different parks in South Africa from 2011 to 2013 and again in 2019, the elephant was found to be the fourth preferred species in the Big Five. The exception is Addo Elephant National Park, where the elephants are the second most preferred species. To determine the value that tourists attached to a sighting, contingent valuation was used. Although approximately a quarter to a third of respondents indicated positive amounts for a sighting across the years, the mean willingness to pay (WTP) reflects the scarcity of the species. The elephant is relatively abundant in all the parks and, in many instances, much easier to spot than the leopard or lion. It is therefore not surprising that the mean valuation of a sighting is much lower than that of the leopard and lion throughout all the years. Although tougher economic conditions in the country also influence WTP, it was found that tourists to South Africa's National Parks do not yet take the increased poaching of elephants into account when revealing their choice, nor in their valuation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (5-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Seul-Ye Lim ◽  
Seung-Hoon Yoo

Soil contamination caused by economic growth through industrialization and urbanization has been progressed inKorea. Soil polluted with heavy metals and chemicals makes significantly negative effects on human and wildlife health. This paper attempts to measure the economic benefits from the contaminated soil remediation policy using a specific case study ofKorea. To this end, the contingent valuation (CV) method is employed. A CV national survey of randomly selected 500 households was implemented using person-to-person interviewing in May 2105.  To elicit the willingness to pay (WTP), we apply one-and-one-half bound dichotomous choice question format to reduce the potential for response bias and spike model to deal with zero willingness to pay (WTP). The mean WTP for the policy is estimated to be KRW 1,357 (USD 1.2) for next ten years per household per year and statistically significant at the 1% level. Expanding the value to the national population gives us KRW 25.4 billion (USD 22.9 million) per year. We can judge that the Korean public places a significant value and be utilized in assessing the total benefits from the policy.


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