Estimating the recreational value of wilderness areas in the tourist season with contingent valuation method (Case Study: Sadiq Abad Desert)

Desert can be an interesting place for tourists and it can make them familiar with different perspectives in beauty of nature and green landscape. From the perspective of European tourists, wilderness excursions have attractions and can be a significant source of revenue for the country, especially in the towns and villages in the desert. In classification of goods, deserts are in nonmarket goods categories and have accordingly no market price and there is no benchmark for comparison with other commodities. This study is to determine the recreational value of Sadiq Abad Desert in the city of Bafg in Yazd and to measure willingness to pay for recreation in this area using contingent valuation and dimensional dichotomous choice questionnaire. To evaluate the effect of explanatory variables on the willingness of people to pay, a logarithmic logit model was used and parameters used in the model are estimated using maximum likelihood. Results have shown that 67.13 % of the subjects in this study were willing to pay the entrance fee. Average willingness to pay per person for recreational use of wilderness is obtained 38520 rials per month.In other words, each family is ready to pay 294,501,529 of annual income per household for a walk in the desert. The annual recreational value of wilderness Sadeqabad is estimated at 963,020,000. Accordingly, the results suggest an important role of deserts in society leisure and city managers are obliged to respect the opinions of visitors to wilderness areas, moreover these deserts can be very economical for the revenue plan.