Is the rhino worth saving? A sustainable tourism perspective

ABSTRACT

Southern African countries are increasingly dependent on natural beauty and wildlife for tourism. Conservation is essential for sustainable tourism, and is expensive, especially for threatened and endangered species. The current price of a species only takes into account its current usefulness, often leading to an underestimation of the value of wildlife. This paper contributes to debates on the value of endangered species by estimating current use and non-use values for the rhino, a species under extreme threat. Internationally, literature that values scarce and endangered species uses willingness-to-pay (WTP) to derive a value of the species. This paper uses WTP to determine the non-consumptive use value of the rhino based on three surveys, n = 1291, conducted in South Africa's Kruger National Park (KNP) and compare it to consumptive use values. Non-use and inter-temporal values are also estimated to provide a comprehensive valuation of the rhino. Non-consumptive use values per rhino in KNP are shown to exceed consumptive use values by a minimum of 50%. The threat of extinction is shown to be linked to institutional, market and policy failures. Policy implications include raising poaching fines, raising wildlife value awareness and incentivising the community benefits of wildlife conservation.

犀牛值得保护么？从可持续旅游的角度来看

物种的当前价格仅考虑当前作用通常会导致低估其价值。本文估计极度受威胁的犀牛的当前使用和非使用价值来辩论濒危物种价值。运用支付意愿在三项南非克鲁格国家公园的调查确定犀牛的非消耗使用价值并比较其消耗使用价值，估算非使用和跨期价值，对犀牛全面估价。园内每只犀牛的非消耗超过消耗使用价值至少50%，灭绝的威胁与制度、市场和政策失败相关。政策建议包括提高偷猎罚款、提升野生动物价值意识及激励保护野生动物的社群效益。

KEYWORDS:

• Willingness-to-pay
• endangered species
• consumptive and non-consumptive values
• conservation value
• use value, non-use value

关键字:

• 支付意愿
• 濒危物种
• 消耗与非消耗价值
• 保护价值
• 使用价值
• 非使用价值

Acknowledgments

The grant holder acknowledges that opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations in any publication generated by the NRF-supported research are that of the author, and that the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.

Disclosure statement

The authors derive no financial benefit from the application of this research.

Notes

1. Income elasticity refers to the percentage change in the quantity of a product demanded when income changes by 1 percentage point.

2. Expenditure on a good is a function of the price of the good (p), the quality of the good (z) as well as the utility (u) that a consumer derive from consuming the good.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa [grant specific unique reference number (UID) 85625].

Notes on contributors

Melville Saayman

Professor Melville Saayman is currently the director of the tourism research unit TREES (Tourism Research in Economic Environs and Society) at the North-West University, South Africa. The focus of his research is on tourism expenditure analysis and contingent valuation. One of his favourite fields of research is on valuing different species, especially from a tourism perspective. He has published in excess of 160 articles in various international tourism and management journals.

Andrea Saayman

Professor Andrea Saayman is a professor of Economics at the North-West University, South Africa. She is an applied economist and her research is mainly in the broad field of tourism economics and financial economics, with recent interest in environmental economics. Using econometrics and other modelling techniques, she has published in excess of 60 articles in various international economics and tourism journals.