Title: Economic valuation of protected areas and recreational sites in India: some review findings

Authors: Nidhi Yadav; Naresh Chandra Sahu

Addresses: School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Management (HSS&M), IIT Bhubaneswar, Satyanagar, Bhubaneswar-751007, Odisha, India ' School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Management (HSS&M), IIT Bhubaneswar, Satyanagar, Bhubaneswar-751007, Odisha, India

Abstract: The economic valuation studies based on protected areas (PAs) and recreational sites of India have been critically reviewed. In most of the studies, travel cost method (TCM) and contingent valuation method (CVM) have been used to measure the economic value of PAs. These methods are not sufficient to elicit total economic value (TEV) of different sites thus studies are incomplete. It is found that ignorance, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty and inappropriate institutions are the major hurdles in adopting the survey based methods, especially CVM. The review findings reveal that while measuring economic value of PAs, results of different studies adopting different techniques are not the same. In addition to that, it is found in the review that some scholars have estimated use value and some others non-use value. The findings of the review conclude that only one study has captured both use and non-use value of a national park.

Keywords: economic valuation; protected areas; valuation techniques; natural resources; recreational sites; environmental policy; India; use value; non-use value; national parks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEPDM.2015.074726

International Journal of Environmental Policy and Decision Making, 2015 Vol.1 No.4, pp.297 - 310

Received: 06 Feb 2015
Accepted: 25 May 2015
Published online: 16 Feb 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article