Abstract:
Contemporary wildlife conservation is often promoted through market-mechanisms. The
logic behind this approach is that wildlife must ‘pay its way’ if it is to be conserved.
While this approach can be critiqued from a variety of perspectives, considerable
investment has been made in finding ways to create markets for wildlife conservation.
From a methods perspective, assessments of willingness to pay, using contingent
valuation surveys, have become widely used to determine whether or not various values
for wildlife can be translated into market values, and thus into economic arguments for
their conservation. This study assesses respondent views of the role of divers in marine conservation and examines willingness to pay among certified U.S. scuba divers for
particular wildlife encounters while diving.
