VALUING BOTANIC COLLECTIONS: A COMBINED TRAVEL-COST AND CONTINGENT VALUATION SURVEY IN AUSTRALIA

Paul Mwebaze and Jeffrey Bennett

No 100688, 2011 Conference (55th), February 8-11, 2011, Melbourne, Australia from Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society

Abstract: The economic value of biological collections in three major botanic gardens in Australia was estimated using the Travel-Cost (TC) and Contingent Valuation (CV) methods. The study used truncated count data models to control for the non-negative integer and truncation properties of the number of visits to botanic gardens in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. We estimate consumer surplus values of approximately $34 per trip to each botanic garden, resulting in the total social welfare estimate of approximately $96.9 million in 2010 Australian dollars. This result is relatively high compared to similar studies conducted in other countries. Willingness to pay (WTP) for entry fees and or higher parking charges for access to botanic gardens were also investigated. Results indicate a positive mean WTP of approximately $3-$4 per trip per person. These findings will be useful for resource management decisions in the botanic gardens and other biological collections in Australia.

Keywords: Resource/Energy; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-tur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/100688/files/Mwebaze.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aare11:100688

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.100688

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2011 Conference (55th), February 8-11, 2011, Melbourne, Australia from Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().