Natural landscape valuation of Wulingyuan Scenic Area in Zhangjiajie City
张家界武陵源风景区自然景观价值评估

Natural landscape provides us lots of benefits, such as sightseeing, adventuring, relaxing and learning. However,primarily due to unprecedented human activities (e.g., aggressive land development and discharge of pollutants) and the lack of recognition of the value of nature, there have been extensive losses of precious natural resources and destruction of ecosystems. To partly address these problems, one solution is to conduct economic valuation of the natural landscape and integrate the economic value into the decision making process. To evaluate the economic value of the natural landscape, this study used travel cost method to evaluate use value and contingent valuation method to evaluate non use value. Use value consists of consumer cost and consumer surplus while the non use value is reflected by people's willingness to pay for a landscape. Wulingyuan Scenic Area is in Zhangjiajie City of Hunan Province, it is famous in the world for the beautiful and unique natural scenery. We conducted the survey in October, 2011, interviewing visitors from 28 provinces in China. Our results show that the consumer cost and consumer surplus are 6.755 billion Yuan and 1.175 billion Yuan, respectively, and thus the use value of Wulingyuan is 7.930 billion Yuan. With respect to the nonuse value, the median payment is 46.06 Yuan per year, and the pay rate is 65.73%, and thus the total nonuse value is 971 million Yuan. The nonuse value is made up of existence value, option value and bequest value, which are 496 million Yuan, 174 million Yuan and 301 million Yuan, respectively. In sum, the total economic value of the natural landscape of Wulingyuan is 8.90 billion Yuan in 2011. The economic value of the landscape in 2011 is much more than the previously estimated value or the average tourism revenue in recent years, which indicates a remarkable achievement of environmental protection and resources conservation in this area. In addition, the administrative bureau of the scenic area should understand that economic value is only a part of, though often regarded as the most important part of, the intrinsic value of the Wulingyuan scenery.