Recreational Use Value of Sherana Valley in Duhok Governorate, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Abstract

Ecotourism and outdoor recreation are becoming one of the most attractive activities in the economic developments mainly due to their relaxation aspects for reducing the daily urban stress. While, debates continue about selecting the best strategies for recreational activities management, due to natural resources and finance limitations. Thus, estimation of economic value and benefits of recreation sites require allocating optimum resources of scarce. The economic evaluation of the recreation impact has been observed by few studies in Kurdistan region of Iraq. The current study aimed to determine the effect of demographic and socio-economic features of tourists on recreation demand, tourist use value in term of (Travel Cost trip, The Demand Function model and Calculation of the Consumer Surplus). The results showed that there was a slight difference between genders, graduates degrees and job career to visit Sherana valley natural tourist destination. Interestingly, most of the ecotourist visited the Sherana Valley for the opportunity to experience the beauty and magic of its great outdoors (55.5% and 22.5% respondents did their first-, and second-time visits, respectively). Moreover, the difference between families income has a great effect on the visits. The findings showed that the average value of total travel cost was 24472.5 per tourist per visit and the most interesting finding was that the annual number of tourists visit affected by the travel cost, household income, age, and education level were not compatible with theoretical expectation in the travel cost implementation. Hence the consumer Surplus was estimated in this study to be 862069 ID (~ 690 US$). Due to the lack of database in this domain further researches need for other sites that qualify as a natural destination of recreation