Abstract This study investigates households’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for improved urban recreational facilities in Debre Tabor town, Ethiopia, a recently designated Regiopolitan city and regional convention hub experiencing rising recreational demand from both residents and visitors. Primary data were collected from 260 resident households between December 2024 and March 2025 through a multi-stage random sampling procedure. The choice experiment consisted of 18 choice sets divided into two blocks and included four key recreational attributes: public lodges, urban parks, green routes, and litter reduction, along with a monetary cost attribute. Preferences were analyzed using both basic and extended conditional logit models. The results show that all improved recreational attributes significantly increase utility, while cost has a negative effect on choice. Marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) estimates indicate that green routes are the most valued attribute (ETB 277.63 in the basic model and ETB 337.38 in the extended model), followed by urban parks, public lodges, and litter reduction. Incorporating socioeconomic characteristics reveals that income, age, and education significantly increase WTP, whereas family size reduces it. The estimated aggregate total WTP of ETB 12507084.36 suggests that resident contributions could partially bridge local fiscal constraints. Overall, the findings provide clear guidance for prioritizing and financing recreational investments in fast-growing secondary cities facing budget limitations.
Tefera et al. (Sun,) studied this question.