An Empirical Study Of The Willingness To Pay For Nairobi National Park Services.
Abstract
The aim of this study is to examine the factors that influence the willingness to pay for park services with a view to suggesting
appropriate pricing policies for National Parks and Reserves.·
Econometric methods are applied to data from 333 Nairobi
National Park users. The data were obtained through fieldwork undertaken
in January and February 1983 in Nairobi National Park.
The study has shown that the factors that may help explain
people's willingness to pay for the services of Nairobi National Park
fall into two main categories:-
(a) The sncio-economic characteristics of the pal'k users,for example
their level of formal education, their incomes, age, the time and
money cost of visiting the park among other things.
(b) The attributes of the park itself,for example the park roads,
game viewing points, guides, security of the park user and other
amenities provided by the park.
An interesting result of this study is that human congpstion
in the park has a significant negative impact on the park usersl
willingness to pay for the park services, thus, although a differentiated
pricing policy is recommended in order to increase the
number of visits to the parks by Kenyan nationals, this policy
should be pursued with care. Additional results of the study
indicate tflat the current gate charges should be raised to reflect
the users' willingness
the prices of seasonal tickets should be increased.
Citation
A Research Paper submitted to the Department of Economics, University of Nairobi, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree cf Master of Arts in Economics.Publisher
Arts-economics