Economic Valuation Of Beach Resources In The Ko Chang Marine National Park, Thailand

Recreational benefits related to a non-market good in the marine protected areas (MPAs) cannot be counted by regular market price mechanisms. Economists attempt to quantify those benefits linking human welfare and conservation through the use of non-market valuation. In Thailand, despite beaches along with the Ko Chang Marine National Park (KCMNP) are major sources of tourist attractions, there are a series of threats coming from human activities. Assessing the value of coastal resource tourism is important information for the nature-based park investment and management. Thus, it is imperative to value the beach recreational benefits involving both use and non-use values with a systematic framework such as travel cost method (TCM) and contingent valuation method (CVM) as well as cost benefit analysis (CBA), etc. This thesis is going to exactly do that.First of all, this study combined both revealed and stated preference data gathered through incorporating an on-site stratified sampling survey of409beach visitors. The joint type of travel cost and contingent valuation questionnaires was designed and administrated to elicit individual visitor’s willingness to pay (WTP) and consumer surplus (CS) estimation using the shorelines of the KCMNP as a pilot study area. Empirical results developed from the individual observation travel cost model show that the estimated CS of recreational activities is$208per trip and$233per trip of a Thai visitor under Poisson (PO1) and Negative Binomial (NB) models, respectively. In contrast, the CS of a foreign visitor is two times higher than that of the Thai visitor’s. Furthermore, the WTP for beach resource protection was elicited from two groups of visitors: Thai visitors VS foreign visitors. The results indicate that the average WTP for a Thai beach visitor is about$12.01per visit under the single-bounded elicitation survey, and$7.27per visit under the double-bounded elicitation method, respectively. By contrast, the per foreign visitors’ WTP is twice as much as that of Thai visitors’.As all the potential beach visitors’CS and WTP are counted, it reveals s that the beaches along the Ko Chang national park are indeed highly valuable tourism resources. These suggest that it be highly recommendable that properly raise the entrance fees charged to the visitors is justifiable because the benefit accrued to a potential visitor is much higher than the fees he or she was charged. Thus, a rational tourist will be willing to pay this charge without suppressing the number of trips he or she is going to take in order to maximize his or her benefit. Additionally, the revenue received from the increased beach entrance fees can benefit the beach management, and at the same time plays a role in solving over-crowding problem on the site so as to facilitate the beach resource protection.In addition, this study also utilizes the CVM to measure the ocean protection benefits acquired from a proposed scenario of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) project. In the process, a CBA is performed in order to verify whether or not it is economically feasible for appropriation from the general public to funding the project. A questionnaire survey of300randomly clustered households was analyzed using Tobit models. The estimated WTP in terms of tax payment of a household for the project turns out to be$72.36per year, which can be translated into an aggregate monetary benefit of$298,753.46per year for the local community. The CBA result indicates that the net present value (NPV) of the project can reach as high as$465,162.25per year, internal rate of return (IRR) reaching9.14%, and benefit-cost ratio (B/C) to be2.21even without taking consideration of all intangible benefits associated with the project in the calculation, suggesting that the proposed wastewater treatment plant project is economically profitable.In summary, the novelty of this study involves both theoretical and methodological contributions as well as empirical aspects:(i) with regard to the TCM study, the research provides some new empirical evidence regarding the economic value of the beach recreation activities and sites as well in the Southeast Asian region. The value discovery suggests that the use value placed on beach resources in the KCMNP is worthy of attention in the park management policy-making so as to enhancing ocean resource conservation and management, not only in Thailand’s marine protected areas but also in elsewhere with similar coastal characteristics;(ii) It is worth of noticing that the results of WTP in this study were estimated separately between two different user groups:domestic beach visitors vs. international visitors. The quite value differences accrued to each group of visitors demonstrates that both income level and environmental sensitivity are important determinants on economic values. This result could be used for the beach visit pricing policy, where pricing discrimination tactic could be adopted by charging different prices against domestic and international beach tourists, respectively. We believe that such measures will ultimately play a role in facilitating beach park management so as to lead sustainable development of coastal tourism in Thailand;(iii) Using the CVM method, the case study not only plays a role in supplementing the deficiency in environmental valuation research on the marine park in the Southeast Asian countries but also proposes a new idea as to how to combine the information developed from beach resource valuation and sea water quality protection project, i.e., cost-benefit analysis. This could become a good template for related studies. The good about this is to put economic valuation work in an empirical perspective, where relatively few researches have been done in such a manner.