Measuring Willingness to Pay for Economic and Ecological Services in Tandooreh National Park

National parks are particularly important in terms of conservation of genetic pools and providing different economic and ecological services and goods. Evaluation of economic values of these services gives insight to policy makers for better understanding of the importance of these assets. Today evaluation of ecosystems services and goods is given momentum in the context of ecological economics worldwide. Besides other important services provided by the natural resources such as national parks including genetic conservation, soil protection, enhancement of hydrologic cycle, carbon sequestration and mitigation of climate change, outdoor  recreation is an important service which mostly demanded by urban population of big cities. Different methods can be applied for evaluation of these services. In this case it has been observed that in Tabriz, each individual is willing to pay 41140 Rials (Rls) for protection of environment. It is also reported that for recreation purposes each family was willing to pay 20000 Rls per night to be allowed to camp in a natural environment. It was shown in an evaluation that for recreation in northern forest areas, 65.8 percent of the people were willing to pay a reasonable sum of money which was 15153 Rls per month to entry. Estimated recreational value of Sisangan National Park is 52.235 million Rls per day. In another study it was observed that willingness to pay for visitors of the same park was 2477 Rls for each visit. Protecting value and also recreational value of this park was estimated to be 5.8 and 2.5 million Rls per hectare, respectively. There are numerous studies on this issue in other countries. As an example, Maille & Mendelsohn (1991) estimated recreational values of Madagascar forests to be 360 to 468 dollars per hectare. Tandooreh National Park is located in a mountains area of Khorasan Razavi with an area of 37800 hectares. It is a part of Harirrood and Khashafrood rivers catchment and sub-catchment of Daroongar River. In this study, contingent valuation method was used. This method is normally used for none consumable and none marketable of natural and environmental goods and willingness to pay of individuals under an assumed market is assessed. For assessing willingness to pay, Double-Bounded dichotomous questionnaire method was used. In our study the aim of 77.1 percent of the interviewed persons visited the park for recreation and 22.9 percent was for other purposes. From the total of 144 samples, 18.1 percent replied that the purpose of visiting the park is clean air and a favorable environment, 6.9 percent to collect medicinal plants, forage and other special plants, 13.9 percent for animal watching and hunting birds, 4.2 percent for use of mineral water and 56.9 percent for all services mentioned. The average number of days that a family stayed was 1.56 and total coast of travelling was 397375 Rls for each family. The amount of money willing to pay per month for each family household was 7098.2 Rls for recreation and 241819.5 for mineral water, 74062.5 for hunting, 15013.9 for forage and 14402.1 Rls for medicinal plants.
Willingness to pay for hunting was rather higher than other services and for recreational willingness to pay this was the lowest.  Willingness to pay is a tool to evaluate the economic and ecological benefits of the natural environment. This was apply to the present study and the results showed that most of the visitors are willing to pay a sum of money based on their purpose of the visit either for recreation or collection of plants or even bird hunting, the latter seems to be more attractive to some individuals.
Acknowledgement
This research (16794.2) was funded by vice chancellor for research of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, which is hereby acknowledged