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Publication year : 0
Thematic : TEEB
Language : English
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Some landscapes that have significant value to people are protected through statute. Protected
landscapes that serve as popular recreational resources and destinations hold significant use
values for those people that visit them. Recognition of these recreational benefits of protected
landscapes provides a sound economic rationale for their management. This paper provides
estimates of the potential magnitude of recreational value via benefit transfers of Taal Volcano
Protected Landscape in the Philippines - a major tourist attraction and designated as one of the
key priority biodiversity areas for protection. Taal Volcano Protected Landscape is a popular area
for recreation activities such as hiking, day-camping, picnicking, bird watching, horseback riding,
fishing, boating, wind surfing, sailing, rowing, and kayaking.
Benefit transfer is the use of information from research conducted on other sites (i.e. the study
sites) to inform questions at a site (i.e. Taal Volcano Protected Landscape, the policy site) that
lacks primary research. Benefit transfer approaches include: 1) transferring of values or functions
from a single site or set of similar sites, and 2) estimating a meta-regression transfer function that
can be used to predict values for the policy site in question. One study site in the Philippines was
selected and used in a point estimate transfer application. Likewise, a meta-regression transfer
function model was estimated based on selected ‘study sites’ from the US. These selected ‘study
sites’ were chosen based on their similarity in terms of recreation activity, climate, and/or site
characteristics with the characteristics of the Taal Volcano Protected Landscape. Furthermore,
implicit price deflators and purchasing power parity were incorporated to account for income and
cost of living differences between the study and policy sites. Exogenous factors, such as
differences in individual preferences, cultural, and institutional conditions between The
Philippines and US are beyond the scope of this paper, but they have the potential to invalidate
the result of an international benefit transfer.
Results show that point estimate transfer approach provided a better estimate of access value than
meta-regression benefit function transfer approach. While in-sample benefit transfer predictions
of the meta-regression model show an absolute percentage transfer error of 18%, the simple outof-
sample prediction result has very high absolute percentage transfer error (1,231%). Hence, in
policy application, a model with more than 100% transfer error is not suggested. The estimated
welfare estimate of recreational access using point estimate transfer was PHP 36 per person per
trip in 2006. The aggregated recreational benefits at the Taal Volcano Protected Landscape in
2006 was PHP 9.7 million from 155,701 visitors at Batangas side and PHP118.9 million from
1,906,242 visitors at the Cavite side, for a sum of about PHP128 million. This access value is not
equivalent to economic resources that can be generated when visitor use fees is imposed to the users. User fees should be based on a willingness-to-pay (WTP) study that captures public
perceptions and WTP fees, among others.
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Keywords : coral reefs
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje
