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Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia

An increasing number of protected areas (PAs) are being established in many countries to conserve and preserve the wildlife species and to maintain earth's ecological balance, but in emerging economies such as Ethiopia, PAs are currently confronted with inadequate conservation funding that make...

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Autores principales: Aseres, Sintayehu Aynalem, Sira, Raminder Kaur
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7475108/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32923705
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04500
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author Aseres, Sintayehu Aynalem
Sira, Raminder Kaur
author_facet Aseres, Sintayehu Aynalem
Sira, Raminder Kaur
author_sort Aseres, Sintayehu Aynalem
collection PubMed
description An increasing number of protected areas (PAs) are being established in many countries to conserve and preserve the wildlife species and to maintain earth's ecological balance, but in emerging economies such as Ethiopia, PAs are currently confronted with inadequate conservation funding that makes it tough to protect the remaining biodiversity. PAs, therefore try to use other financial means such as ecotourism to subsidize their financial shortage and nourishes the nexus between conservation and development. Estimation of visitors' willingness to pay (WTP) would be useful to craft strategies to strengthen the self-financing capability of PAs and hence realizing environmental and livelihood goals. In this study, the visitors' WTP for the proposed conservation fund in the context of Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP) was estimated using a contingent valuation method. The finding indicated that 75% of visitors were willing to pay a conservation fee. The mean WTP was estimated to be US$7.40 for foreign visitors and US$1.00 for domestic visitors. The finding suggests that the implementation of conservation fee in addition to the existing entry fee helps to improve the long-term sustainable financing of PAs.
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spelling pubmed-74751082020-09-11 Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia Aseres, Sintayehu Aynalem Sira, Raminder Kaur Heliyon Article An increasing number of protected areas (PAs) are being established in many countries to conserve and preserve the wildlife species and to maintain earth's ecological balance, but in emerging economies such as Ethiopia, PAs are currently confronted with inadequate conservation funding that makes it tough to protect the remaining biodiversity. PAs, therefore try to use other financial means such as ecotourism to subsidize their financial shortage and nourishes the nexus between conservation and development. Estimation of visitors' willingness to pay (WTP) would be useful to craft strategies to strengthen the self-financing capability of PAs and hence realizing environmental and livelihood goals. In this study, the visitors' WTP for the proposed conservation fund in the context of Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP) was estimated using a contingent valuation method. The finding indicated that 75% of visitors were willing to pay a conservation fee. The mean WTP was estimated to be US$7.40 for foreign visitors and US$1.00 for domestic visitors. The finding suggests that the implementation of conservation fee in addition to the existing entry fee helps to improve the long-term sustainable financing of PAs. Elsevier 2020-08-27 /pmc/articles/PMC7475108/ /pubmed/32923705 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04500 Text en © 2020 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Aseres, Sintayehu Aynalem
Sira, Raminder Kaur
Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia
title Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia
title_full Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia
title_fullStr Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia
title_full_unstemmed Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia
title_short Estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in Ethiopia
title_sort estimating visitors' willingness to pay for a conservation fund: sustainable financing approach in protected areas in ethiopia
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7475108/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32923705
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04500
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