PACT or no PACT are tourists willing to contribute to the Protected Areas Conservation Trust in order to enhance marine resource conservation in Belize?

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to determine whether tourists are willing to pay (WTP) fees to support conservation in Belize and, if so, to determine their maximum willingness to pay. This is an important issue for Belize and for all countries that heavily rely on the quality of their environmental resources to attract tourists. From 1996 to 2017, the Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) has charged a $3.75US conservation fee to all tourists upon their departure from Belize. In April of 2017, this fee was raised to $20.00US, but not without controversy. In May 2012, February 2013, and again in May 2014 almost 400 tourists were surveyed to determine if raising the fee was possible and by how much. Results suggest a significant percentage of tourists are willing to pay for conservation in Belize; many in excess of the current fee of $20.00US. So far, the increased fee does appear to have had any impact on tourism arrivals. This empirical observation, combined with the results of this paper, are important pieces of information as it relates to conservation finance in Belize and has potential implications for conservation finance in other tropical destinations.

Introduction

Like most Caribbean countries, Belize is heavily dependent on the tourism industry and the tourism industry in Belize is heavily dependent on the quality of the environment: particularly marine ecosystems [17], [4], [41]. Tourism is the nation's principle source of foreign exchange, and the main use of the Belize Barrier Reef (http://belizetourismboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TravelTourismDigest2017v2.pdf). The Belize Barrier Reef is the largest in the western hemisphere, second in size only to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Established as a World Heritage Site in 1996, this diverse system of reefs, cayes and atolls is responsible for approximately 30% of national GDP via fisheries production and tourism and contains one of the highest levels of marine biodiversity in the Atlantic [14], [30]. It is the quality of the mangroves, sea-grass, coral reefs, and sea life that attract tourists to Belize [43]. Therefore, protecting and improving the quality of these environmental resources is important for economic development [26], [39]. Failing to protect marine resources jeopardizes future economic prosperity by deterring tourists and compromising the flow of ecological services [4]. Unfortunately, the agencies that manage and protect these resources are often underfunded [21], [25], [38]. Ideally, those who derive benefits from using the environment, including tourists, should bear the cost of preservation and conservation [47]. One mechanism for accomplishing this is the use of entrance or exit fees. These entrance/exit fee systems can be viewed as payment for environmental services (PES) received by the tourists [28], [3].

From 1996 to 2017, every international visitor to Belize has been charged $3.75US/$7.50BZ upon their departure. This fee is part of Belize's conservation strategy and the revenue goes directly into the Protected Areas Conservation Trust, better known as PACT. From 2012 to 2014 (the time period covered by this study), Belize received an annual average of more than 300,000 overnight visitors (not including cruise ship passengers).

In April of 2017, the Government of Belize decided to raise the conservation fee to $20.00US/$40.00BZ. This created an outcry from tourist industry providers, arguing the fee would “cripple” tourism in Belize.¹ This research is aimed at better understanding the effect this increase might have on visitation and whether the fee could be even higher than $20.00US. The primary research question addressed is whether tourists visiting Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker, Belize, are willing to pay higher fees in order to enhance marine conservation programs. Another question explored is whether or not informing people about the current $3.75 fee would result in respondents anchoring their stated willingness to pay at the existing fee level.²

Hopefully, this information can be used to help establish appropriate conservation fees that support improved marine and coastal management without significantly reducing tourist arrivals. This examination of tourists’ willingness to pay for conservation programming in Belize provides a unique addition to the current marine conservation literature and may provide valuable information to policy makers in determining whether and how much to increase the current exit fee for the PACT in the future. This research also contributes to the non-market valuation literature by examining the potential anchoring effect associated with the provision of information about existing fees in contingent valuation surveys.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 briefly provides some background on ecosystem services and their importance to Belize, a summary of the history, current context, and future plans for PACT, and reviews similar studies on willingness to pay to protect marine resources. Section 3 details the design of the survey, its implementation, and the results of the analysis. Section 4 discusses the results and concludes the paper.