Estimating the Outdoor Recreation Value of Ghaleh gol Forest Area of Lorestan Using Contingent Valuation Method

In recent years the increasing population and urban development has caused the increase on recreational demand in natural areas. The Ghalehgol forest is located in Khoramabad county. Due to the geographical location, natural and historical attractions here is one of the important tourism area of Lorestan province. The aim of this study is estimating the recreation value of this region according to visitor's idea and investigation the influencing factors on willingness to pay for visiting the area.
The necessary statistics and information were collected through the completion of questionnaires by visitors that had independent income in spring of 2016. Generally, 252 questionnaires were completed by random sampling. 245 of these questionnaires for further analysis were selected. For this purpose, contingent valuation method was used. To investigate the factors affecting visitor’s willingness to pay, the logit model was estimated using maximum likelihood. Then the aggregate elasticity and marginal effect analyzes was conducted.
The results showed that 65% of the visitors are willing to pay for visiting the region. The variables of monthly income, distance of home and proposed price for entrance at the probability level of one percent and the variables of car owner and education at the probability level of five percent have statistically significant effects on the willingness to pay. Aggregate elasticity related to education and monthly income showed that in constancy of other factors, one percent increase in education and monthly income probability of willingness to pay increase 0.95 percent and 0.43 percent and for variables distance to home and proposed price decrease 0.10 percent and 0.05 percent, respectively. Amounts of marginal effect for variables monthly income and education showed that with increase of one variables mentioned probability of willingness to pay increase 4.2 percent and 2.7 percent and for two variables distance to home and proposed price were leading to a reduction in the probability of willingness to pay for visitors 3.4 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively. marginal effect for car owner variable showed that willingness to pay in car owners 15.5 percent higher than don’t it. The whole annual recreational value of the region was estimated 1266.18 million Rials in 2016.
The high amount of recreational value represented the beauty and value of the region's and the importance of this region to the visitors, that reveals the need for attention to the management of tourism industry in this area, to prevent the destruction of these valuable ecosystems and maybe income-generating.