Towards managing human-elephant conflicts in Sri Lanka: comparing tourists’ willingness to pay and farmers’ willingness to accept

Abstract

This paper assesses tourists’ preferences for elephant conservation and the farmers preferences for compensation for the crop damage caused by wild elephants using dichotomous double bounded contingent valuation method. This study employs 218 international tourists to seek to estimate maximum willingness to pay for nature conservation. Besides, 439 farmers interviewed to seek their minimum will compensation for their crop damaged caused by wild elephants and coexistence with wildlife. We find that tourists would be willing to pay more on elephant conservation and farmers prefer compensation for their crop damage from tourism receipts. This study enlightened the coexistence and wildlife stewardship feasible from mutual agreed upon conservation via tourism receipts and willingness to accept compensation for the tolerance and coexistence with wildlife to achieve long-term conservation goal.