Abstract

A major problem confronting environmental economists is the difficulty in valuing environmental resources and other public goods such as recreational sites since there are no markets or markets are imperfect in situations where they exist. The Kakum National Park, officially opened in 1994, is one of the most important parks in Ghana that protects a vast rainforest including its bio-diversity, habitats and natural processes, and houses the only Canopy Walkway in Africa which allows visitors to explore a tropical rainforest canopy from suspension bridges. Since the establishment of the Kakum National Park, not much has been done to assess its value to recreationers using the appropriate economic valuation techniques. This study seeks to address these questions by adopting the simple formulation of the individual travel cost method to derive the monetary value of Kakum National Park as well as factors that influence visits to the park using a survey of 246 visitors. Our results indicate that the annual per person value of the site is about 67.28 (US$ 46.40) which translates into an annual aggregate value of  8,481,653.20 (US$ 5,849,416) in 2009. Regression analysis using the zero-truncated negative binomial method indicate that travel cost, gender, knowledge of composite sites are the most important factors that influence visitation to the Park.

Key words: Travel cost, non-market value, protected areas, National Parks