Economic Valuation of Borena-Sayint National Park, Ethiopia: An Application of Contingent Valuation Method

Abstract

When a market for a certain good is suitably competitive, economic behavior can be studied all the way through the market-pricing instruments. In view of the reality that this is usually not viable in the case of natural resource and environmental goods and services, particular methods of economic valuation of such goods have to be used. This study presents the economic valuation of Borena-Sayint national park in north-central part of Ethiopia. Contingent valuation method was used to carry out the analysis of data collected from 236 local resident households of the park. To do so probit model was used in the contingent valuation methodology. The result from probit model shows log-transformed income, age of the household head, gender of the household head, training on forest conservation, and numbers of family members were among the significant and positive variables that affect local resident’s willingness to pay for conservation. On the other hand, a randomly offered initial bid, marital status, and illiteracy had a negative sign and were significant variables. Finally, the mean willingness to pay of households for the conservation of the forestry park was also estimated to expand in to aggregate willingness to pay. The mean WTP from probit model is birr 38.15. This suggests that there is a strong economic case for the conservation of the forestry park.

Keywords: Borena-Sayint national park, Contingent valuation method, Economic valuation