Revue internationale des sciences économiques et de gestion

Determinant of Household Willingness to Conserve Gibe Sheleko National Park: An Application of Contingent Valuation Method (CVM)

Abstract

Hayatu Mude Sherif

The problems related to Natural Resources and Environmental Goods has been the main topic of discussion in every Conference and Panel discussions as worldwide and country level. Among all, this study focused on Conservation of Gibe Sheleko National Park, which is very threated by society. For this reason this study examined determinant of Household’s willingness to pay or labor force contribution for conservation of the park. Contingent valuation method used to estimate household’s WTP for the conservation of the park in terms of money as well as labor force contribution; seemingly unrelated bivariate probit model was used to analyze the determinants of households’ WTP and to estimate the mean WTP which obtained from Double Bounded Dichotomous choice (DBDC). Results of the model shows that age of the household head, income related to park resource, distance of home to park and training were negatively and statistically significant. Whereas marital states, family size, household income Occupation of household’s TLU and frequent contact were positive and statistically significant. The study also show that the mean willingness to pay estimated from the Double Bounded Dichotomous Choice formats was computed at 98.72 ETB and 43.8 labor force days per annum per household, respectively. The respective total aggregate value of conservation was computed to 395336.28 ETB and 175331.4 labor force day per annum, respectively. When we convert the labor force contribution in to local labor wage price on average one person daily laborer wage is 60 ETB then the aggregation labor force contribution is 10,519,890 ETB per annum. To close the implication is that any policy direction towards conservation of the parks and other natural resource should integrate the community at large.