Valoracion contingente del uso recreativo y de conservacion de los vistantes del Parque Natural los Alcornocales

Se han medido los valores economicos de uso recreativo y de conservacion de los vistantes de libre acceso del Parque Natural los Alcornocales por valoracion contingente. Para la estimacion del valor recreativo se hand empleado dos formas de pago: un precio de entrada y un incremento en los gastos de viaje causado por un hipotetico incremento del precio de los vcarburantes (obteniendose un 23 por ciento de respuestas protesta con el primero y un 3 por ciento con el segundo). Los resultados obtenidos son dos veces superiores con el segundo vehiculo de pago para el modelo preferido (11,03 fretne a 21,52 Euros?visita). Se considera que la encuesta de gasto arroja mejpres estimaciones del valor del bienestar disfrutado por el visitante, mientras que la entrada incorpora la protesta del vistante que surgiria en in contecto de comercializacion de servicios recreativos. En el caso de la conservaion, la pregunta de valoracion plantea una aportacion voluntaria anual a un fondo monetario dedicado exclusivamente a la conservacion del Parque Natural...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 pretest 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 unto 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 spent 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 exclusively to the conservation of the Alcornocales Natural Park. The value of conservation is not influenced by any socioeconomic characteristic.