Valuation of the recreational use and the conservation of the visitors of the Alcornocales Natural Park [Spain] | Valoración contingente del uso recreativo y de conservación de los visitantes del Parque Natural los Alcornocales

Spanish; Castilian. Se han medido los valores económicos de uso recreativo y de conservación de los visitantes de libre acceso del Parque Natural los Alcornocales por valoración contingente. Para la estimación del valor recreativo se han empleado dos formas de pago: un precio de entrada y un incremento en los gastos de viaje causado por un hipotético incremento del precio de los carburantes (obteniéndose un 23% de respuestas protesta con el primero y un 3% con el segundo). Los resultados obtenidos son dos veces superiores con el segundo vehículo de pago para el modelo preferido (11,03 frente a 21,52 Euros/visita). Se considera que la encuesta de gasto arroja mejores estimaciones del valor del bienestar disfrutado por el visitante, mientras que la entrada incorpora la protesta del visitante que surgiría en un contexto de comercialización de servicios recreativos. En el caso de la conservación, la pregunta de valoración plantea una aportación voluntaria anual a un fondo monetario dedicado exclusivamente a la conservación del Parque Natural.

English. We have made two contingent valuation surveys to estimate the economic value of free access recreational use and of the "conservation" of the public visitors in the Alcornocales Natural Park (a Mediterranean forest located in the South of Spain). Recreational use represents a current direct use value and "conservation" aggregates option and existence values. For the estimation of the value of the recreational visit two payment vehicles have been employed: a hypothetical increase in trip expenditures due to increases in the price of fuel and a hypothetical implementation of an entrance-fee to access pathways and recreational areas. The former payment vehicle yielded very few protest responses while the protest response rate was very high with the latter. We consider that the increase in trip expenditures format provides better welfare measures, although the entrance fee has the advantage of including real-life problems that would be encountered if this payment vehicle should actually be implemented. In any case, the values based on the trip-expenditures survey are two to three times higher than those obtained with the entrance-fee survey (21.52 / visit in the first case for the preferred dichotomous model, after reducing the value to take into account the valuation of the other areas visited and the valuation of the approach trip, and 11.03 / visit in the second case). Finally, we show how some socioeconomic characteristics influence the valuation of the recreational use. Concretely, visitor's income, hours spend in the Natural Park and the number of members of the family affects positively; while the knowledge of substitute natural area and living near the Alcornocales Natural Park affects negatively. For conservation, the valuation question was framed as a voluntary annual contribution of the visitors to a fund dedicated exclusively to the conservation of the Alcornocales Natural Park. The value of conservation is not influenced by any socioeconomic characteristic.