Measuring the demand for nature-based tourism in Africa: a choice experiment using the "cut-off" approach

Integrated Conservation and Development Plans (ICDPs) have been put forward as means of reconciling wildlife conservation in developing countries with improvements in community incomes. In this paper, we use the Choice Experiment approach to quantify overseas tourists' willingness to pay for attributes of nature-based tourism as part of an ICDP, focussing on visits to mountain gorilla areas in Rwanda. Contributions to community incomes are included as one attribute of the design. Methodologically, we employ a "cut-offs" approach to choice modelling to filter inconsistent responses and to reduce hypothetical market bias. Three major findings are that (i) many people choose options which violate their stated maximum trip price (ii) the cut-offs approach changes parameter estimates and thus willingness to pay estimates; and that (ii) that tourists do not have a significant demand for how much of tourism spending is channelled to local communities.