Balancing conservation goals and ecotourism development in coastal wetland management in Sri Lanka: A choice experiment

Understanding the tradeoff between tourism development and environmental conservation is essential for the sustainable management of ecotourism. Accordingly, we conducted a choice experiment (CE) using valuation workshops to estimate the preferences of foreign tourists for ecotourism development and biodiversity conservation in Rekawa coastal wetland in Southern Sri Lanka. Transforming preferences into marginal willingness to pay (MWTP), shows that guided-boat trips in Rekawa lagoon is the most important development attribute, followed by increased beach cleanup activities. The MWTP for smaller turtle-watching groups is much lower, but still significant. Tourists are also willing to pay for conservation in the form of efforts to reduce losses in biodiversity. The fact that the CE asks for contributions to future management and improvement fund, and because that many tourists do not intend to return to Rekawa, this implies that elicited values can be interpreted as either non-use or option values for those who intend to return.