Incorporating local visitor valuation information into the design of new recreation sites in tropical forests

In rapidly industrializing countries, decisions need to be made as to what characteristics new tropical forest parks in or near urban areas should have. Using a discrete choice experiment, we estimate prospective visitors' willingness-to-pay for a range of forest park characteristics for a representative sample of Malaysian households in the Kuala Lumpur-Selangor region. To enable park managers to adapt park designs to important types of heterogeneity among park visitors, we further identify how these estimates vary across geography (i.e., residential location: urban, suburban, rural), major ethnic groups, and patterns of recreational behavior. We show how a model that includes a wide array of visitor heterogeneity can be used to identify configurations of park characteristics that maximize social welfare across both the general sample and specific subgroups of prospective visitors.