The Value of Endangered Forest Elephants for Local Communities in a Conservation Landscape

Jonas Ngouhouo Poufoun (), Jens Abildtrup, Dénis Sonwa and Philippe Delacote
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Jonas Ngouhouo Poufoun: Laboratoire d'Economie Forestière, INRA - AgroParisTech
Dénis Sonwa: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) - Central Africa Regional Office
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jonas NGOUHOUO-POUFOUN

No 2015-10, Working Papers - Cahiers du LEF from Laboratoire d'Economie Forestiere, AgroParisTech-INRA

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to determine and characterize the social and cultural preferences for endangered forest elephants’ conservation in the Congo Basin’s Tridom landscape. The paper uses data from a 2014 representative face-to-face survey with a stratified random sample of 1035, in 108 villages in the Cameroonian and the Gabonese part of the landscape. To assess the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for elephant conservation, the questionnaire included two contingent valuation (CV) elicitation formats: Double Bounded Dichotomous choice (DBDC) and Open-Ended (OP). Combining both elicitation formats is expected to lead to an estimate that is closer to the true WTP. We find on average that local households are willing to pay monthly CFA 1139.4 (€1.74) to avoid forest elephants extinction. That’s CFA 62.8 million (€95,778) for the overall population per month or annually CFA 753.9 million ( €1.15 million). Indigenousness has a positive and significant higher WTP for elephant conservation. This is due to the loss of the spiritual enrichment, the cultural identity as well as the lifestyle of the indigenous Baka Pygmies with an extinction of the elephant. Applying spatial data, we find that local communities prefer elephant far from their crops. The estimates show that the existence of Human-Elephant Conflict does not influence their preferences for elephant conservation. Yet, this result is important, as the hypothetical scenario proposed to the households included the prevention of Forest-Elephant Conflict. Therefore, our study suggests that local communities can be willing to engage in biodiversity preservation, when the public benefit from conservation comes along with private benefits related to the avoidance of Human-Elephant Conflict.

Keywords: Forest Elephant Extinction; indigenous people; Contingent Valuation; WTP; Interval Regression Model; Double-Hurdle Model. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C24 Q29 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2015-10, Revised 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-dcm and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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