Environmental management of protected areas in Spain: the recreational use value of L'Albufera Natural Park

Measuring economic value of certain types of non-market goods such as protected natural areas, provides valuable information on which to base public sector decision-making related to their management e.g. investment in conservation and new amenities or recovery of degraded landscape. Two methods are applied in this paper to calculate the recreational use value of L'Albufera Natural Park (Spain): the contingent valuation method (CVM) and the travel cost method (TCM). The results obtained are based on a survey of 501 park users carried out summer/autumn 1995 and they demonstrate how CVM yields a lower use value than TCM, although theoretically the opposite outcome was expected. Other recent studies in Spain and elsewhere however are in line with these results.