Valuing Conservation of Walia Ibex: An Application of Choice Experiment Valuation Method

Abstract

For the purpose of valuing conservation of Walia Ibex, in this paper choice experiment environmental valuation technique is employed. 200 residents from Addis Ababa and 94 foreign visitors have been randomly chosen to reply to a CE survey questionnaire. Hence, four attributes; change in population size, change in listing status, funding mechanism and employment opportunity were taken along with a monetary attribute to describe various conservation management options. Furthermore, Random Parameters Logit model has been used to estimate the choice data set generated from the survey.

The estimation result demonstrates that all the attributes are significant, except employment opportunity attribute in the case of visitors. Moreover, years of education and family size were found to significantly affect residents’ utility with positive and negative impacts respectively. Age is found to positively and significantly affect visitors’ utility for conservation improvements. The highest MWTP being accredited to change in listing status attribute for both the residents and visitors’, conservation practitioners are advised to focus on conservation elements improving listing status of the species.

Keywords: Choice Experiment, Walia Ibex, Endangered, Conservation, non-use value, Ethiopia.