The economic valuation of nature-based tourism in the South African Kgalagadi area and implications for the Khomani San ‘bushmen’ community

Abstract

The economic importance of the various attributes of dryland nature-based tourism in the Kgalagadi area is generally unknown, as is the distribution of benefits from such tourism. This study seeks to value selected attributes of nature-based tourism in the Kgalagadi area by applying the choice experiment technique and then assessing the potential for nature-based tourism to contribute to the Khomani San ‘bushmen’ livelihoods through a payment for ecosystem services scheme. The values placed on the attributes by park visitors are estimated using the conditional logit and random parameter logit models. The visitors prefer more pristine recreational opportunities, increased chances of seeing predators and disapprove of granting the local Khomani San communities access to grazing opportunities inside the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Notably, the marginal willingness to pay for pristine recreational opportunities across all models ranging from R76.96 (US$9.08) to R177.08 (US$20.88) per trip depending on the type of restrictions imposed. Given that previous studies report that the Khomani San are willing to accept reasonable compensation for relevant resource-use restrictions, there is scope for a payment for ecosystem services scheme where visitors could be charged additional park entry fees sufficient to compensate the local communities to accept a restriction of natural resource use in the Kgalagadi area.

Keywords:

• choice experiment
• Khomani San
• Kgalagadi
• logit
• nature-based tourism
• PES

We are grateful to Louise Swemmer and Wendy Annecke of SANParks (South African National Parks) for assistance with data and materials. Funding from FORMAS and Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) is gratefully acknowledged. Additional funding from ERSA (Economic Research Southern Africa) is also gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. The term ‘bushmen’ is generically used to refer to the Khoisan. Culturally, the Khoisan are divided into the hunter-gatherer San and the pastoral Khoi (Barnard 1992).

2. In addition, the Khomani San people were awarded additional and special rights in the remainder of the park because they lost more land in comparison to the Mier community during the establishment of the park. The special rights include commercial development and undertaking of cultural activities (Bosch and Hirschfeld 2002).

3. One of the shortfalls of this study is that the questionnaire did not ask the respondents which attributes they put the greatest weight on when choosing between alternatives. Therefore, we cannot shed light on compensatory decision-making or the lack thereof. Nonetheless, the questionnaire used in the survey underwent numerous revisions following on from focus groups and a pilot study. Thus, we are confident that the study is credible.

4 It should be noted that one of the major content validity issues in CE is that of scenario design (i.e. whether the attributes and their levels described in an understandable and clear manner). It is for this reason, that we undertook a pilot study prior to finalising the questionnaire. For example, in the case of the predator attribute, the levels were defined both as the chance of viewing predators and the absolute number of predator at a waterhole. Our observation from the fieldwork is that there was no confusion with regard to attribute definitions. Therefore, we conclude that the park visitors could make a realistic valuation of the impacts of reductions in these uses.