Disadvantages Of National Park

The forested protected areas like national parks, sanctuaries and reserves are providing lot of benefits to individual and society in host of ways. They perform ecological functions and provide recreational facilities to those visiting them. The sites also help contribute to foreign exchange earnings, enhancing job opportunities for the local community and endemic plants and animals which are likely to have high non-use value to the future generation in environmental scenic. These sites are however threatened by various activities such as forest fire, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, wildlife migration, human settlement inside the sites, encroachment by local peoples and pollution created by the visitors inside the sites. The overall negative

Estimating the economic benefits of these sites has made significant headway in the past few decades. A lot of research work has been done in many developed countries since the first attempt has been made by Clawson and Knetsch in 1966. But in developing countries, even if national park, wildlife reserves and other recreational areas are playing an important role in tourism industries and economic growth, limited attempts have been made to estimate their economic values. The present study has been carried out due to two reasons: Firstly, in India there is little effort that has been conducted to estimate the economic value (both use and non-use values) of the national parks, sanctuaries and wildlife reserves. In addition the entrance fee related studies also very rare. Particularly in Tamilnadu, there is no empirical research works estimating the economic value and entrance fee of the national parks, sanctuaries and wildlife reserves. Secondly, tourism around MTR depends mainly on visitor’s trip to the site. Socio-economic characteristics of the visitors and distances between the site and places of origin affect their decisions regarding making trip to MTR. To sustain the eco-tourism of MTR, it is very important to know how these variables affect their trips to the site. Thus this research on MTR attempted to fulfill the

1.8.2 Supplementary Objectives:

1. To study the socio-economic characteristics of visitors.

2. To identify the determinants of visitations to outdoor recreation in MTR.

3. To estimate the consumer surplus and recreational use value of the MTR.

4. To assess these values to determine an optimal entrance fee for visiting the MTR.

5. To explore whether or not the potential exists to capture value from visitors through changes in current entrance fees.

6. To identify factors that determines the visitor’s willingness to pay for preserve the MTR.

7. To find out whether improvements in the recreational and conservation of the site would lead to a higher demand for site