Valuing international tourism benefits from natural areas

Abstract

Tourism involves intensive utilization of environmental assets and natural resources. Valuing these assets may be relevant for policy purposes. This paper presents results from a contingent valuation study of the benefits experienced by tourist visitors to natural areas in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). Construct validity is approached by investigating question format effects. The open-ended format is compared with dichotomous choice methods using a general parametric testing procedure. In general, the single-bounded method does produce larger estimates of consumer surplus than the open-ended method, but these divergences were not significant for German and Italian tourists. In addition, the double-bounded method converges to open-ended results, especially for UK tourists. The former method is also robust with respect to the choice of the bid vector design. The assessed benefits highlight the economic contribution of these assets to the tourism industry.