Economic Valuation of Recreational Function in Sohan Degraded Rangelands

In this study we designed a scenario about a one-day tour (with given characteristics) and during some questionnaires requested from respondents to answer ‘how many people do they guess to participate at the tour in attention to various conditions which prevail on it.’ The implementation costs were estimated for each tour as 595$. According to this, the minimum participating fee for each people was estimated at about 20$. We suggested the payment fee for participating to the tour as 20, 21, 28, 32, 36, and 40$ per each person. These questionnaires were answered by at least 41 respondents. We took a sum from the number of peoples that the respondents guessed. So by multiplying of each sum in its related payment we could estimate the optimum amount of payment per each person as 24$. Therefore, the amount of income during a year was estimated. The results showed that the procedure can be used by scientists for economic valuation of recreational function in arid and semi-arid ecosystems.