Valuing visitor services and access to protected areas: The case of Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda
Introduction
Introducing an entrance fee or increasing existing fees on nature-based tourist sites offer several managerial and economic benefits. By regulating access, fees can reduce congestion, littering, trampling, disturbance and exploitation of wildlife, and sought after attributes of protected areas (Cessford, 2000). Such fees can also supplement public budget allocated for the operation, maintenance, improvement of park facilities, and enforcement of relevant regulations (Manning, 1999). It can also help recover the cost associated with establishing and managing parks, as well as compensate for the opportunity costs associated with preserving and protecting sites (Buckley, 2003). Modifications to the fee structure can also help avoid loss of revenue, prevent underproduction of park services, address the relatively high overhead cost associated with charging no fee or too low a fee (Walpole et al., 2001, Whitelaw et al., 2014). This is valuable especially when there are competing needs, including development projects, for limited funds available to decision makers and park managers (Adams et al., 2008, Baral et al., 2008).
Determining the amount of money users are willing to pay for enjoying a park's amenities also allows us to more accurately estimate the monetary value associated with the park and its services, internalize environmental benefits, and provide a more complete picture of a country's natural capital (Lee & Han, 2002). Furthermore, such analysis generates information that can be used in economic appraisal of policies and projects designed for the park (Reynisdottir, Song, & Agrusa, 2008). By decentralizing funding sources, such measures can also improve management efficiency (Cessford, 2000). In many situations, the park manager also has better control over the amount, timing, and how much to charge different groups of park users, underscoring the efficiency of such fees as a management tool (Manning, 1999; Buckley, 2003).
Considering that government-run nature based tourist sites' are public goods, a group of goods and services afforded to citizens using tax revenue for the purpose of enhancing public welfare, however, introducing entrance fees and/or increasing existing fees can have equity implications (More and Stevens, 2000, Schneider and Budruk, 1999). This is particularly true in developing countries. If the fees make the park accessible only to richer international tourists and local elite at the expense of the rest of the population, it can exclude individuals with lower levels of income and education (Crandall and Driver, 1984, Dustin et al., 2000). Higher fees can reduce the frequency of their visit, duration of their stay at the park, number of the parks’ paid recreational services they participate in, and impact the likelihood of future visits to the park (Nyaupane, Graefe, & Burns, 2009). As such, higher fees can reduce societal welfare (Nyaupane et al., 2009).
It is, thus, important to achieve a balance between raising revenue and ensuring that it is implemented in a socially responsible manner (Adams et al., 2008, Thur, 2010). Achieving this balance requires an understanding of park users’ reactions to changes in fee structures and the equity implication of its incidence on certain segments of the population (Fix and Vaske, 2007, Kim and Crompton, 2002, More and Stevens, 2000). However, our understanding of such predictors and the equity implications of such fees is limited. Since most of the previous studies focus on developed countries, the implications of the results to developing countries with higher levels of societal inequity are limited. Although the few published studies focusing on developing countries find valuation methods to be applicable and report positive willingness to pay estimates (e.g., a willingness to pay park fees study on a double barrier reef in the Philippines indicated a potential contribution of over USD 3 million annually to the national economy, Samonte, Eisma-Osorio, Amolo, & White, 2016), few empirically assess the current and projected park use equity implications of such change in fee structure. This limits our ability to optimally manage nature-based assets and precludes us from understanding and addressing the potential social impacts, thereby perpetuating sub-optimal outcomes on both fronts (Baral et al., 2008, McCarville et al., 1996, Schwartz and Lin, 2006).
In this paper, we assess park use differences between national and international tourists and among national tourists of varying income and education levels through a survey designed to explore these questions using Nyungwe National Park, Rwanda, as a case study. Specifically, we assess differences in self-reported past (how many times they have visited the park before the survey), present (how long they are staying at the park and what number and types of paid recreational park services they are participating in), and future park use (if they intend to visit the park again in the future) between national and international tourists and among national tourists. We then analyze the factors that predict park users’ willingness to pay entrance fees and increased fees on currently paid services. We also estimate the financial return from implementing such changes in fee structure and perform a sensitivity analyses.
Section snippets
Literature review
Protected areas are important in conservation works, ensuring wildlife safety, maintaining biodiversity and several ecosystem services (Whitelaw et al., 2014, Karanth and DeFries, 2011; http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09669582.2013.873445). Such areas are especially valuable to the endangered or near endangered species. As the size of protected areas increase and as more areas are declared protected, however, it becomes increasingly challenging for public funds to finance the
Tourism in Rwanda and Nyungwe National Park
Tourism is important to Rwanda's economy, evident based on its contribution to the national GDP, export, employment, and investment both in current and projected terms as well as absolute and relative terms. The number of international tourists arriving in Rwanda has increased significantly over the past few years, almost doubling from 2008 to 2014 (Rwanda Development Board, 2016). Tourism related expenditures in 2014 accounted for 24.5% of Rwanda's export, a figure more than four-times the
Methods and data
Initiatives to raise more money for park management purposes are under active consideration at Nyungwe National Park. The increase in revenue raised may be used to improve park protection, reduce threats to the park, increase the population of birds and primate species, enhance the beauty of the waterfalls and the nature-walks and improve trails and rest areas, enhancing the overall park use experience for tourists. The objective of our survey was to understand how the change in fee structure
Socio-demographic background of the tourists
We compared our population of respondents with national administrative records on tourism, which showed that the respondents’ were representative in terms of nationality. In our sample, 30% of the respondents are from Africa and 49% are from Europe, the Americas accounting for 17% of the respondents. The corresponding figures from the administrative data on international visitors are 31.57%, 50%, and 14.47%, respectively (Rwanda Development Board, 2016). This supports our assumption that our
Revenue analyses
Building on the results, which showed park use differences between national and international tourists, this section intentionally focuses on international tourists. It applies historic park visitation growth rate, discount rates, and willingness to pay values on such tourists. The results show a positive net present value. This shows that it is possible to generate new higher revenue by implementing such changes in fee structure without exacerbating park use gaps between national and
Conclusion
Revenues from tourism have the potential to support a burgeoning nature-based tourism industry in a country like Rwanda, which boasts of a rich combination of iconic species and natural habitat. An economic tool in the form of a user-fee based framework can allow for better management of Rwanda's valuable forest and wildlife resources and provide a long-term source of sustained livelihoods for individuals benefitting both directly and indirectly from the country's tourism industry. The design
Acknowledgement
This work was partially supported by MacArthur Foundation (#13-103883-000-INP) and by Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP), a collaboration of The Nature Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), and Auburn University (TNC-P116791 ACCT# 5077).
Pankaj Lal, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Studies and associate director of PSEG Institute of Sustainability Studies, Montclair State University. He undertakes integrative, interdisciplinary research that explores interconnections among society and the environment. He along with his research team have been working in the United States, Africa and South Asia focusing on environmental economics, human dimensions of ecosystem management, natural
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Pankaj Lal, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Studies and associate director of PSEG Institute of Sustainability Studies, Montclair State University. He undertakes integrative, interdisciplinary research that explores interconnections among society and the environment. He along with his research team have been working in the United States, Africa and South Asia focusing on environmental economics, human dimensions of ecosystem management, natural resource conservation and policy, and climate change. His ongoing research projects involve aspects of renewable energy, water, natural resources, and economies that collectively impact communities around the world. Pankaj has received funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Wildlife Conservation Society, NJ Department of Environmental Protection, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others. Recently he has been awarded prestigious NSF CAREER Award to explored place based opportunities for bioenergy sustainability. His research projects include a Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center, established under U.S.-India Initiative for clean energy technologies and supported by Department of Energy, evaluating tradeoffs in ecosystem values due to potential engineering design solutions for flood mitigation, developing ecosystem service based natural capital accounts in Rwanda, assessing people's awareness and willingness to contribute towards conservation of Liberty State Park, and developing payment mechanisms for environmental services in Mauritius and the Dominican Republic.
Pankaj earned his Master's degree in geography from University of Delhi, MBA from Indian Institute of Forest Management and PhD in natural resource economics and policy from University of Florida. Prior to his terminal degree, he worked with Winrock International India as program officer in natural resource management division and Pricewaterhouse Coopers India in the government reforms and infrastructure development practice. He has reviewed competitive grant proposals for agencies like National Science Foundation, United States Department of Agriculture, Sea Grant Consortium, and serves as manuscript reviewer for diverse array of environmental journals. He has published more than four dozen scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals, federal research agencies technical reports and book chapters. He teaches courses in environmental economics and environmental law and policy.