Valuing the attribute enhancements of urban park: a case of the King Rama IX international mangrove botanical garden, Thailand

Abstract

The King Rama IX international mangrove botanical garden, Thailand provides a bundle of benefits, including a source for exchanging knowledge on mangrove forests and recreation opportunities. This study was applied a choice experiment to investigate the potential users’ preferences and willingness to pay for different educational programs and recreational enhancement projects in The King Rama IX international mangrove botanical garden, Thailand. The empirical results from conditional logit model show the potential users are willing to pay 25 Baht, 27 Baht, 89 Baht, and 102 Baht for improved museum design, information signs, recreation activities, and facilities, respectively.

Two groups of visitors are targeted in this research: residents and non-residents. The results showed that the heterogeneity of preferences exists within each of these group. In particular, non-residents attain generally higher values for improvements than residents. For example, non-residents were willing to pay more for museum designs and information signs. It is also argued that the use of model with co-variate in choice experiment has advantage over the model without co-variate since the co-variate model was relaxed the condition of constant parameter for all respondents. The results suggest that the planning and management of this place subject to budget constraints should take into account the attributes of this botanical garden and the preferences of visiting citizens to improve their welfares.