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Walk on the Wild Side: Estimating the Global Magnitude of Visits to Protected Areas

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  • Andrew Balmford
  • Jonathan M H Green
  • Michael Anderson
  • James Beresford
  • Charles Huang
  • Robin Naidoo
  • Matt Walpole
  • Andrea Manica

Abstract

How often do people visit the world’s protected areas (PAs)? Despite PAs covering one-eighth of the land and being a major focus of nature-based recreation and tourism, we don’t know. To address this, we compiled a globally-representative database of visits to PAs and built region-specific models predicting visit rates from PA size, local population size, remoteness, natural attractiveness, and national income. Applying these models to all but the very smallest of the world’s terrestrial PAs suggests that together they receive roughly 8 billion (8 x 109) visits/y—of which more than 80% are in Europe and North America. Linking our region-specific visit estimates to valuation studies indicates that these visits generate approximately US $600 billion/y in direct in-country expenditure and US $250 billion/y in consumer surplus. These figures dwarf current, typically inadequate spending on conserving PAs. Thus, even without considering the many other ecosystem services that PAs provide to people, our findings underscore calls for greatly increased investment in their conservation.A new global analysis indicates that between them, the world’s protected areas receive approximately 8 billion visits each year, with an economic value of hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Balmford & Jonathan M H Green & Michael Anderson & James Beresford & Charles Huang & Robin Naidoo & Matt Walpole & Andrea Manica, 2015. "Walk on the Wild Side: Estimating the Global Magnitude of Visits to Protected Areas," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-6, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:1002074
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002074
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ram Shrestha & John Loomis, 2003. "Meta-Analytic Benefit Transfer of Outdoor Recreation Economic Values: Testing Out-of-Sample Convergent Validity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 25(1), pages 79-100, May.
    2. Ghermandi, Andrea & Nunes, Paulo A.L.D., 2013. "A global map of coastal recreation values: Results from a spatially explicit meta-analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-15.
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