Economic Valuation on Conservation of Rainforest in Eastern Sinharaja, Sri Lanka

Abstract

The value for goods and services is noticeable as the price is paid for those goods and services, but in environmental goods and services the real price or value is misrepresent in ordinary markets. Especially the forest benefits or non-market values are not normally exchange in markets and generally ignored in decision making. Benefits obtained from environmental elements cannot be estimated and it causes for the continuous damages which can be reason for long term worldwide effects. Therefore such values and damages need to be justified at least by ensuring that they can be identified and conserved for future generations. But conserving forest features, improving or managing is costly. Eastern Sinharaja – Sri Lanka is a world heritage rainforest which represented with valuable resources for all living beings. However, the resources in Eastern Sinharaja is under continuous degradation and requires conservation measures. The research problem focuses on what is the economic value on conservation of Eastern Sinharaja rainforest environment. This research is attempt to estimate the total value of conservation of Eastern Sinharaja rainforest environment using Contingent Valuation method (CVM). The information was gathered from a questionnaire survey under random sampling method using 234 of sample size. The results has discovered, respectively socio economic variables, general environmental attitudes and willingness to pay sections designed have identified as key sections which derived the main features which are affecting to the economic value of the conservation of the rainforest environment. Gender, employment, voter, income are socio economic features which affect to the economic value. In general environment attitudes for willingness to pay (WTP) and the respondents attitudes are positive when consider about the significance values of the features for Mean WTP of Rs. 257.30 from a household. This study indicated that despite Sri Lanka is a developing country, people are willing to contribute for conservation of the resource. Those derived values may significantly contribute in conservation of rainforest environment and deliver materials to design applicable policies for future rainforest environment management.