Assessing Willingness to Pay for Conservation in Birdwatching Tourism: Insights from Dihing-Patkai National Park, Assam, India

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-799-1_16How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Willingness-to-Pay; Birdwatching Tourism; Dihing-Patkai National Park; Special Interest Tourism; Conservation Knowledge; Perceived Value for Conservation

Abstract

Special Interest Tourism (SIT), such as birdwatching tourism, is gaining popularity worldwide. Dihing-Patkai National Park, located in Upper Assam, is becoming a popular destination for birdwatchers and photographers. Literature surveys consider birdwatchers among the most educated segments of different tourist genera, especially when it comes to environmental and conservation-related awareness. However, there are no or scant research when it comes to studying the relationship between birdwatcher’s conservation awareness and their willingness to pay towards supporting conservation in biodiversity rich landscapes. This study aims to address this gap by studying the unique traits of birdwatchers that influence their willingness to pay (WTP) towards conservation, especially in biodiversity-rich ecosystems such as Dihing-Patkai National Park. The study introduced a quantitative research design integrating CFA, SEM, and factor analysis to examine the relationships (if any) between different variables. The findings highlight that Awareness of Conservation issues and the Perceived Value of Conservation positively impact birder’s WTP. Unexpectedly, birders’ conservation knowledge was negatively correlated with WTP. These vital findings are believed to provide valuable insights for park management to develop effective strategies that will help generate funding sources to facilitate conservation measures in the park.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Deborshee Gogoi
AU  - Sampreeti Boruah
AU  - Subhadeep Chakraborty
AU  - Pradip Chandra Das
AU  - Chandana Chetia
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/08/13
TI  - Assessing Willingness to Pay for Conservation in Birdwatching Tourism: Insights from Dihing-Patkai National Park, Assam, India
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Innovation and Regenerative Trends in Tourism and Hospitality Industry (IRTTHI 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 171
EP  - 184
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-799-1_16
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-799-1_16
ID  - Gogoi2025
ER  -