Are tourists willing to pay additional fees to protect corals in Mexico?

Abstract

This paper seeks to determine if tourists visiting the Riviera Maya, Mexico, are willing to pay an entrance fee to enhance coral reef protection; and if so, how much would they pay? A discrete choice contingent valuation experiment with almost 400 visitors was used to determine a measure of compensating variation for contributing to a public trust to protect corals. Results suggest that there are significant possibilities for implementing a “coral fund” to raise revenues for coral protection programs in the Riviera Maya region of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. We estimate a mean willingness to pay (WTP) of over $55.00. Additionally, all three estimation methods used produced relatively similar values for mean WTP, ranging from $42 to $58. With approximately five million visitors passing through the Cancun International Airport each year, this suggests that it may be possible to collect between $100 and $400 million annually for coral reef management programs. Thinking very conservatively, if we take a $20 fee and assume that only 50% of tourists would actually be willing to pay, that is still $50 million left on the table annually.