Sustainable financing of conservation is a key challenge in developing countries, due to competing needs. Increasingly, national parks are expected to undertake local community development – at a time when the conservation mandate and threats to conservation have increased signicantly, while traditional transfers from the State have been declining. We demonstrate the potential of park pricing for generating funds for conservation and benefit sharing with adjacent local communities. We estimate recreation-demand models and derive welfare measures for international tourists to a popular African national park. Lastly, we formulate a pricing framework with revenue maximization as an objective. Our results suggest significant underpricing.
by 