Moreno-Gutiérrez, M.; Hernández-Trejo, V.; Valdivia-Alcalá, R.; Juárez-Mancilla, J.; Cruz-Chávez, P.R.; Jakes-Cota, U. Linking Tourist Willingness to Pay and Beach Management: A Travel Cost Analysis for Balandra Marine Park, Mexico. Tour. Hosp.2024, 5, 922-941.
Moreno-Gutiérrez, M.; Hernández-Trejo, V.; Valdivia-Alcalá, R.; Juárez-Mancilla, J.; Cruz-Chávez, P.R.; Jakes-Cota, U. Linking Tourist Willingness to Pay and Beach Management: A Travel Cost Analysis for Balandra Marine Park, Mexico. Tour. Hosp. 2024, 5, 922-941.
Moreno-Gutiérrez, M.; Hernández-Trejo, V.; Valdivia-Alcalá, R.; Juárez-Mancilla, J.; Cruz-Chávez, P.R.; Jakes-Cota, U. Linking Tourist Willingness to Pay and Beach Management: A Travel Cost Analysis for Balandra Marine Park, Mexico. Tour. Hosp.2024, 5, 922-941.
Moreno-Gutiérrez, M.; Hernández-Trejo, V.; Valdivia-Alcalá, R.; Juárez-Mancilla, J.; Cruz-Chávez, P.R.; Jakes-Cota, U. Linking Tourist Willingness to Pay and Beach Management: A Travel Cost Analysis for Balandra Marine Park, Mexico. Tour. Hosp. 2024, 5, 922-941.
Abstract
Balandra, one of the most popular beaches in La Paz, Baja California Sur, was declared a flora and fauna protection area in 2012 and, in 2021, was declared the best beach in Mexico. More recently, it was included among the ten most beautiful beaches in the world. Currently, this beach faces overcrowding. Formulating effective management policies depends, to a certain extent, on the knowledge of their recreational value and visitor characteristics. Recreational value allows us to know the benefits of the tradeoffs among the ecosystem services and society and exhibit the value of possible damages to marine ecosystems. Like the one caused in 2022 by the fire of a tourist boat inside Balandra. Using the individual travel cost method and applying 159 questionnaires to site visitors, four models were estimated to calculate the individual willingness to pay for accessing Balandra, which ranges between 3.86 and 10.38 US$/day/visitor. Recreational economic value (REV) for Balandra was estimated using two essential criteria. One, total of visitors registered in 2021. Two, daily maximum carrying capacity. We also calculated the REV as a proxy of the welfare loss derived from the site's closure. Finally, possible environmental and economic policy instruments that could be implemented are discussed.
Keywords
coastal tourism; marine protected area; Gulf of California; count models; truncated Poisson; negative binomial model
Subject
Social Sciences, Tourism, Leisure, Sport and Hospitality
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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