The Valuation of Environmental Value in Urmia Lake National Parks With Household Production & Cost Function Method

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Abstract

According to importance of environmental resources in conservation of natural ecosystems and human life, restriction on destruction is necessary. National park of Urmia lake in west Azarbayjan province is the habitat of some animals and herbaceous rare species.  National parks have many recreational values for people leisure activities. Urmia lake park provides some qualitative services to the people of this areas. In this research the production function of outdoor recreation in national parks have been computed using household production function of Gary Backer model. In this methods I analyed the relationship between factor of recreation production, time of travel and recreational services by Cobb- Douglas function. Then demand of recreation in Urmia national parks was surveyed, along with demand curves related to the quality of park, income of people ,education of people, and shadow price. The result showed that the recreational shadow price is near to 60 cents for any minutes in national parks. After selection of model, the total economic value of park was computed to $ 25000 per year, which can be used as a base to optimize the financial policy making process in west Azarbayjan province.

Keywords