Measuring the Local Costs of Conservation: A Provision Point Mechanism for Eliciting Willingness to Accept Compensation

Protected areas are employed worldwide as a means of conserving biodiversity. Unfortunately, restricting access to such areas imposes opportunity costs on local people who have traditionally relied on them to obtain resources such as fuelwood and bushmeat. We use contingent valuation to estimate the local benefits forgone from loss of access to a number of protected area types in Uganda. Methodologically, we innovate by implementing a “provision point” mechanism to estimate willingness to accept compensation (WTA) for loss of access to protected areas. We show that the provision point reduces mean WTA by a significant degree. (JEL Q51, Q56)