Abstract
The financial benefit derived from nature-based tourism in the Eastern Arc Mountains (EAMs) of Tanzania has never been assessed. Here, we calculate the producer surplus (PS) related to expenditure on accommodation in the EAMs. This estimate is based on the number of visitor bed-nights collected from a representative sample of hotels, coupled with spatially explicit regression models to extrapolate visitor numbers to unsampled locations, and adjusted to account for how far visits were motivated by nature. The estimated annual PS of nature-based tourism is ~US$195,000. In order to evaluate the future impact of different forest management regimes on PS over a 25 year period, we compare two alternative scenarios of land use. Under a 'hopeful expectations' scenario of no forest loss from protected areas, the present value of PS from nature-based tourism is ~US$1.9 million, compared with US$1.6 million under a 'business-as-usual' scenario. Although the value of nature-based tourism to the EAMs is lower than that generated by Tanzania[U+05F3]s large game reserves, these revenues, together with other ecosystem services provided by the area, such as carbon storage and water regulation, may enhance the case for sustainable forest management.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 75-83 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Ecosystem Services |
Volume | 8 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2014 |
Funding
This work is part of the wider Valuing the Arc programme ( www.valuingthearc.org ), supported by the Leverhulme Trust (UK) and the Packard Foundation (USA). WWF Tanzania Country Programme Office provided valuable logistical and technical support. Ben Balmford is thanked for his help in analysing guidebooks. Sana Okayasu was a Masters Student at Imperial College, London, who partly supported the costs of her fieldwork. Appendix A
Keywords
- Eco-tourism
- Ecosystem services
- Forest conservation
- Nature-based tourism
- Tanzania
- Valuation