Recreational Value Of The "Synevyr" National Nature Park Using Individual Travel Cost Method

Ecotourism is a form of tourism that involves visiting natural areas in the remote wilderness or rural environments. According to the definition and principles of ecotourism established by The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) in 1990, ecotourism is "Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people." One of the main reasons why the ecotourism was created, is the load of the mass tourism on the natural, cultural and historical resources. This load is directly proportional to the increase in the rate of growth of the visits. Ecotourism is stated to be one of the fastest growing forms of tourism. However, ecotourism lacks one global definition. Therefore due to its subjective nature, each country, region or even a company can define ecotourism in their own terms.This study sought to assess the current status of ecotourism and the recreational value of the National Nature Park "Synevyr" in Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. Synevyr, although endowed with a wealth of natural resources. Given the exploratory nature of the research, the study was done by using one of the methods of non-market valuation- an Individual Travel Cost Method (ITCM), which is commonly used for estimating recreational value of the parks, beaches, lakes etc. For this purpose,500 on-site questionnaires were conducted between June and August of 2014.401 of questionnaires were determined as useful. The results showed that travel cost of individuals to the park, age, education, monthly income and satisfaction level are having an impact on number of visits. The semi-logarithmic function was used to estimate the consumer surplus of the park users, which showed the willingness to pay per visit and of course made possible to evaluate the park in monetary way, which wasn’t done by any Ukrainian scientist before.The total NWTP of the individual is ＄18 per person per trip. The recreational value of the consumer surplus represents the annual recreational use value of National Nature Park "Synevyr". In other words, the Park provides a social benefit of some ＄2,700,000 each year.