Estimating Recreational Value of khecheopalri Lake Ecosystem of Sikkim Himalaya using contingent Valuation and Travel cost methods

The main purpose of this study is to estimate the visitors’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the conservation and management of Khecheopalri lake which has major coldwater fish habitat using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) with the application of Ordinary Least Square (OLS) technique. This paper also utilises the Travel Cost Method (TCM) for the estimation of recreational value and consumer surplus through the application of the Truncated Poisson Regression Model (TPRM). The data are collected through direct interviews with 100 visitors through well-structured questionnaires. The results indicated that the visitors’ WTP is significantly impacted by factors such as realised visits, monthly income, time spent at the lake, recreational experience and satisfaction level. Similarly, the important factors that determined the demand for the lake are travel cost, distance, age and monthly income. The average per person per visit WTP is $3.075 and the total WTP is $306.76. The study found that per person per visit recreational benefit is $387.03, total annual recreational benefit is $5921544.0, per person per visit consumer surplus is $18.18 and the total consumer surplus is $181770.74.