Tourism potentials for financing protected areas

Establishment of protected areas is becoming a major avenue for conservation and preservation of the environment. However, due to the inability to self-finance, many protected areas have become "paper parks". Tourism could be a major source of revenue, especially in developing countries, for self-financing of protected areas, through the recovery of use and nonuse values. This paper estimates the use and nonuse values of two protected areas, a marine and a proposed terrestrial park and examines the possibilities of recovering these values from tourists. The results shaw use values could provide a substantial source of income while nonuse Values could also be significant, but would depend on the nature of the protected area. Keywords: use value, nonuse value, contingent valuation method, marine parks, terrestrial parks, protected areas. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.