A Study On The Economic Value Of National Scenic Spots

The State Council approved the first batch of national parks of China in1982November, which indicates the system of scenic spots has been formally established. In the past30years, the landscape areas have driven the tourism industry rapid development and scenic spots have become one of the most important resources of tourism industry in fact. However, in the process of tourism utilization of landscape areas, too much focus on the economic function and excessive emphasis on the development behavior create tremendous pressure on scenic spots. The balance between protection and development is an eternal topic for the management of landscape areas.Based on national park of China as the research object, economic value as the research content, the fundamental goal is that to explain how to evaluate the intrinsic value and recreational value, how to understand the necessity of the effective protection and the rationality of the tourism development and how to promote the economic value into market value so as to realize the sustainable development of the landscape area from the viewpoint of environmental economics and welfare economics. The paper focuses on the above three problems and follows the logical thinking of theory, method and application. The main body is composed of the following three parts:The first one is the theoretical basis, including the second chapter and the third chapter. Chapter2makes a relatively detailed analysis of relevant research on economic value of scenic resources from the research process, methods and contents and a clear framework and content of this paper are defined. In view of whether the environmental resources, including national scenic area have value has not yet agreed, Chapter3uses the classical value theory to analysis the value source of national park of China and constructs the value system. Economic value composes of commodity value, recreational value and intrinsic value.The second one is the research methods, including the fourth chapter. The evaluation methods for national park of China are studied. The present published records obviously lack the consideration of consumer behavior owing to the limited background of the study of environmental science. However, the visitors and their travel behavior in national park of China are just the main research object of tourism discipline. Therefore, the paper modifies relevant variable of the evaluation of economic value based on the research about the travel behavior from the tourism discipline. For travel cost method (TCM), the variables are travel time valuation, multiple destination trips, the annual visitor survey, substition effect, congestion and so on. For contingent valuation method (CVM), detailed analysis on any disparity and various biases are requisite.The third one is the application, including the fifth chapter to the seventh chapter. According to the research results of the former two parts, the paper conducts a case study on Hangzhou West Lake landscape area. Through the visitor market survey in2012full year, three typical kinds of TCM and CVM are applied to assessment of the recreational value of Hangzhou West Lake landscape area and the result is56.6～271.13billion Yuan; Double bounded dichotomous choice CVM is applied to assessment of the intrinsic value and the result is127.781billion Yuan. So, the present study shows in2012the economic value of Hangzhou West Lake landscape area is184.381-400.911Yuan. Finally, based on the different stakeholders in the development process of West Lake, from the viewpoint of macro-management and micro-operation, the paper discusses the realization mechanism of the economic value of West Lake, including legislation, management, operation and supervision. All that is in essence about how to achieve the balance between the effective protection and reasonable utilization.