Measuring the economic benefits of protecting the Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina from commercial tourism development : results from a contingent valuation survey

This paper focus on a contingent valuation application as to measure the value that the Portuguese households are willing to pay for the recreation and biodiversity benefits provided by a Natural Park in Portugal. A national survey was designed and implemented. It gathered 1678 respondents and focus on three tourism development policy options for the Park. We refer to (1) the Wilderness- Area commercial tourism development scenario; (2) the Recreational-Area commercial tourism development scenario and, finally, a scenario version which is characterized by the tourism development of both Wilderness and Recreational Areas of the Natural Park. The results show that the Portuguese evaluate the Wilderness-Area and the Recreational-Area differently. In particular, the Portuguese show a higher willingness to pay for preserving the Wilderness-Area free from any commercial tourism development. However, we find no statistical difference between the willingness to pay for the Wilderness-Area and the willingness to pay for the Wilderness-Area jointly with the Recreational-Area. The last result can be interpreted as a consequence of the lack of credibility of the protection scenarios or, more interestingly, as pointing to the eventual presence of warm glow in the stated willingness to pay responses.financial support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the European Commission, and the Portuguese Institute for the Conservation of Nature.