Estimating the economic value and willingness to pay for environmental improvement of recreational services at the Nairobi national park, Kenya

Abstract

Nairobi National Park is a key urban environmental amenity that provides a wide range of ecosystem services, among them, recreation services. The Park faces constant conservation threats mainly due to land use change thus a need to adopt innovative strategies to achieve its conservation goals. Economic valuation is one of the innovative tool that policy makers are adapting to enable decision makers realize the full value of such ecosystems. The study aimed at estimating the economic value of recreational services and Willingness to Pay (WTP) for improved Park environmental quality. The economic value of the Parks’ recreational services was estimated using two regression models, Zero Truncated Poisson and Zero Truncated Negative Binomial regression models. The recreational services economic value was estimated at US$ 7,599,733 and US$ 10,010,668 per year. The results showed a mean WTP of 1.3 USD for Park with the degradation level hypothesized in the study and 10 USD for improved environmental quality. Since the current access fee for the park is 4.3 USD, a WTP to pay of 1.3 USD can potentially lower the economic value of the park while 10 USD for improved environmental state meaning over 50% revenue increase. The study also assessed four Kenyan policy and legal frameworks for the application of economic valuation in environment and natural resources management. They included; The National Environmental Policy of 2013, the Amended EMCA 2015, the Kenya Green Growth Strategy and Implementation Plan of 2015 and The Draft wildlife Conservation and Management Policy of 2017. The analysis of these policy and legal frameworks documents was done through literature review of the official gazzetted documents as well as key informant interviews and the results discussed