Abstract
The economic valuation of goods that do not have a market, like services offered by natural parks, provide a lot of information for the purpose of policy making on the conservation and protection of the natural environment, as well as for establishing park use strategies for potential park visitors. In this respect, this paper aims to analyse visitor preferences for Cornalvo Natural Park, which has been classed, since 1992, as a Site of Community Importance. To do this, we conducted an analysis adopting the choice experiment methodology to determine visitor preferences for a set of attributes. Additionally, we included a visitor preference heterogeneity analysis based on a mixed logit model in order to calculate individual willingness to pay with respect to a set of previously specified attributes. Finally, we also implemented the latent class methodology to define groups of individuals with similar characteristics. The information was gathered from visitor surveys conducted during 2019. The main results show that tourists had a high preference and willingness to pay for higher biodiversity levels and lower numbers of visitors, whereas the other attributes were less relevant. Additionally, we detected some degree of heterogeneity in willingness to pay by sex, age and income. Finally, Latent class analysis identified two visitor classes, determined primarily by age and income.
Highlights
The demand for the economic valuation of protected spaces, like natural parks, has been growing noticeably for several decades [1,2,3]
This paper aims to analyses visitor preferences for Cornalvo Natural Park and in particular, deepening whether biodiversity is a relevant attribute for visitors to the natural park, taking into account the heterogeneity of preferences
The only positive and significant coefficients are for positive biodiversity, whereas a reduction in biodiversity and an increase in the number of visitors, as well as a 20% increase in the number of information boards have a significant negative influence on park visitor utility
Summary
The demand for the economic valuation of protected spaces, like natural parks, has been growing noticeably for several decades [1,2,3] These protected areas have a number of distinct characteristics, like the conservation and preservation of the cultural and biological diversity of the different species and the wildlife to which they are home [4,5]. The expansion, over the last few decades, of tourism, currently regarded as the fastest growing industry worldwide, has a major impact on these protected areas [4,6]. This has moved a debate on the direct repercussions of the tourism boom on the wellbeing of wildlife and fauna. There is a focus on the possible vulnerability of the biodiversity of national parks, as, according to some authors, these environmental changes are one of the major factors leading to the disappearance of species [7,8,9]
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