A Bioeconomic Model of Integrating Locals in Non-Profit and For-Profit National Parks For Biodiversity Conservation

To achieve the preservation goals of national parks, integrating locals into national park operations provides a win-win approach for local development and sustainable resource management. While some studies shed light on the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation projects that include the economic interests of locals, most of them do not consider the direct participation of locals in national park operations. Moreover, existing literature assumes that national parks are for-profit organizations, whereas they are generally non-profit entities. In this study, we develop a bioeconomic model to investigate the effect of integrating locals into tourism conducted by non-profit or for-profit national parks on biodiversity conservation. We demonstrate that there are conditions for involving locals in national park operations to enhance biodiversity successfully. Under these conditions, if biodiversity improves or has no impact on agricultural productivity, the non-profit national parks invariably bring higher utility to locals and improve biodiversity than for-profit national parks. Otherwise, non-profit national parks do not necessarily bring higher utility to locals or improve biodiversity than for-profit national parks. Moreover, we evaluate the scheme of involving locals in tourism in terms of social welfare. We show that a subsidy/taxation on wage rates will bring the market equilibrium to a social optimum