Recreational Value of Coastal and Marine Ecosystems in India: A Macro Approach

Coastal and marine ecosystems offer a large number of services for human well-being, including recreation, which is evidenced by people's willingness to spend on leisure. Traditional categories of national income accounting such as income from service sectors like "Hotels and Restaurants" do not capture the net welfare (consumers' surplus) from recreation that can be attributed to the existence of the ecosystem. This article presents the first estimates of a country-wide recreational value regarding the consumers' surplus generated by coastal and marine ecosystems in India using the Zonal Travel Cost Method. We found that the recreational value from nine coastal states in India generated consumers' surplus to the extent of 0.9% of India's gross domestic product at market prices [Rs93,888.76 billion or US$5,863 billion purchasing power parities (PPP)] in 2012–2013 for domestic and foreign tourist (at 2012–2013 current prices). The consumers' surplus generated for visitors of domestic origin is estimated at Rs295 billion (US$18.4 billion) and for visitors from the rest of the world is Rs562 billion (US$35 billion). This highlights the importance of ecosystems and provides a framework to estimate recreational demand functions. It also provides a mechanism to create suitable state-specific tariffs on recreational services for financing coastal and marine conservation.