The value of wildlife-viewing tourism as an incentive for conservation of biodiversity in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

The Okavango Delta is a large wetland safari destination in north-western Botswana. Given that future threats to its water supply may affect the biodiversity of this ecosystem, it was important to elicit a value of the Delta from the tourism sector and assess how biodiversity influences that value. This paper presents a valuation of visitors' preferences for the preservation of the Okavango Delta in 2001 and 2002 using contingent valuation (CV) and travel cost (TC) approaches. The results showed that the quality of wildlife viewing was significantly correlated with willingness-to-pay (WTP) for preservation and suggested that impaired biodiversity would negatively affect the value of this ecosystem. The combined CV and TC values totalled US$285/visitor/annum. Extrapolated to the annual pool of visitors to the Delta in 2002, this translates to US$23 million, a large reservoir of funds from the tourism sector that could be used for preservation.