Tourists’ before and after experience valuations: A unique choice experiment with policy implications for the nature-based tourism industry

The popularity of nature-based tourism revolves around tourist experiences. Tourism, as an experiential good has the potential to impact on tourists’ awareness, appreciation, and actions concerning the environment and wildlife. User preferences and valuations of nature and wildlife may change because of the experience. Exploring user valuations of environmental goods before and after the experience is, however, an area that has been given little attention in the literature. We use discrete choice experiments (DCEs) to evaluate tourists’ preferences and valuations for nature, wildlife and related services before and after experiencing a nature tour. The results demonstrate how the unfamiliarity of the good consumed (in this case fauna and flora in a hitherto unseen natural environment) affect the non-use valuations of consumers. We find that tourists’ valuations for nature and wildlife significantly improve after experiencing the nature tour.