Estimating Recreational Value of Caspian Sea Coast (Case Study: Radio-Darya Recreational Coast of Chalous, Iran)

In this research, recreational value of Radio-darya of Chalous was estimated, besides the measure of visitor's willingness-to-pay (WTP) by using contingent valuation (CV) method and dichotomous choice (DC) questionnaire. WTP was measured by using Logit model whose parameters was estimated based on Maximum Likelihood (ML) Model. The results show that 65 percent of investigated individuals will to pay for recreational usage of mentioned coast. The average of WTP is 1169 Rial (about 1 USD) for each visit. Recreational monthly value of this coastal region is more than 37.75 million Rials (about 3230 USD); to be precise, total annual recreational value of this area is estimated about 453 million Rials. Furthermore, the variables of offer amount and visitor's income are statistically significant at the level of 1%; so, these 2 variables are considered as the most important factors affecting visitor's WTP.The next factor influencing their WTP, in the view of visitors, is the quality of coast (coast neatness and water limpidity) which is significant in 1% statistical level. Level of education is the next effective factor with significance at 10% level. Moreover, the distance between coast and habitation place is the next factor affecting WTP negatively at 10% level.