Wildlife focused tourism is often cited as having the potential to play an integral part of threatened species conservation efforts, particularly through financial support. In this research, we focused on the direct financing of conservation by investigating tourists’ willingness to pay to snorkel with reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) at Barefoot Manta, an ecotourism resort in the Yasawa group of islands in Fiji.
Results/Conclusions
Our results indicate that 82.4% of people surveyed would be willing to pay a mean value of $FJD 18.29 (SE $FJD 1.69, 28% increase) more than the current cost, and 89% of people surveyed would be willing to pay a mean value of $FJD 20.34 (SD $FJD 1.75, 31% increase) more for a hypothetical scenario where they would snorkel with 50% fewer people. We also investigated tourists’ willingness to make voluntary donations to the local community above an existing payment of $FJD 20 that is built into the current snorkel payment of $FJD 65. On average, 91.3% of the tourists interviewed were willing to donate additional funds with an average additional donation of $FJD 17.14 (SD $FJD 0.94, 85.7% increase over existing price) to the community to pay for educational and environmental support. There were few significant relationships between willingness to pay and demographic factors (including age, income, nationality, education, and others), suggesting that willingness to pay was widely held by the tourist population staying at Barefoot Manta Resort. Together, these results indicate that wildlife-based nature tourism could represent a potential, but not unlimited, income source to fund conservation in the Yasawa group, Fiji islands, and that conservation can arise from partnerships between local communities and the tourism sector.