 Tourists’ Willingness to Pay Increased Entrance Fees at Mexican Protected Areas: A Multi-Site Contingent Valuation StudySustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-22 Abstract: It can be challenging to set protected area entrance fees without information on how much visitors are willing to pay. It is particularly difficult for agencies managing multiple sites to set fees without conducting surveys at each location. In order to examine how willingness to pay estimates would vary across sites with distinctive profiles, 877 visitors at five Mexican protected sites (Calakmul, Cobá, Palenque, Sian Ka’an, and Yum Balam) were interviewed through double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation surveys. The results suggest that visitors would be willing to pay higher entrance fees, with mean maximum willingness to pay estimates of 2.8–9.8 times current fees, ranging from US$15.70 to US$25.83. Visitor demand was found to be relatively inelastic, with aggregate fee rises of 26% estimated to result in a 5% decrease in visitation. These results suggest that there is room to raise revenues through moderate fee increases without a concomitant drop-off in visitation. Keywords: contingent valuation; entrance fees; willingness to pay; protected area management; sustainable tourism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:11:p:3041-:d:235324 Access Statistics for this article Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu More articles in Sustainability from MDPI |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.