Rain Forest Tourism – Estimating the Benefits of Tourism Development in a New National Park in Madagascar

Travel cost and contingent valuation methods are applied to the problem of estimating the potential consumer surplus available to international nature tourists from a rain forest conservation project in Madagascar. Data are derived from surveys of nature tourists in Madagascar and international, nature tourism professionals in the U.S. and Europe. Typical trip travel cost models are used to estimate changes in nature tourists’ consumer surplus when a new national park is developed for nature tourism. The results are compared with contingent valuation analysis of the willingness-to-pay of nature tourists to include the new national park in their current trip to Madagascar.