Estimation of local tourists Willingness To Pay

Coral reef around Cape Rachado, Malacca was among the first to be declared as a Fisheries Prohibited Area (FPA) in Malaysia. Despite this declaration, there are no measures on the ground to effectively enforce this regulation, opening up the area for illegal fishing and harvesting of corals, seaweeds and sea-cucumbers. In addition, the reef is under constant stress from increased sediment run-off, discharge of sewage/wastewater and other pollutants from the rapidly developing coastline of Port Dickson. Coral reef studies from 1976 to 2014 in the area indicate that the live coral coverage has declined from 59.6% to 11.9%. In this study, Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was adopted to elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) by local tourists for an improved coral reef management scenario for this area, which comprises of enforcement of fisheries prohibition regulation, increasing awareness on FPA and the reef, implementation of regular coral reef monitoring, and exploration of ways to improve the sea water quality at this area. The contingent valuation survey demonstrated that the local visitors were supportive of a conservation fee, if the money was exclusively used to fund this coral reef management scenario. The estimate of median WTP for conservation fee was MYR 3.00. If a fee of MYR 3.00 can be fully captured from the population of local visitors to the beaches along Port Dickson and Cape Rachado, it can conservatively generate as much as MYR 1.03 million per annum.