تقدير الطلب على زيارة المحميات الطبيعية كنشاط للسياحة البيئية باستخدام نموذج ثنائي الحدية السالب

Abstract EN

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has advantages of establishing an ecotourism industry, because it covers 40-60% of Saudi tourism activities inside Saudi Arabia, based on location.

For such purpose, a plane of establishing 103 natural reserves accepted officially, but after 10 years, only 10 natural reserves established.

The study object is to introduce an economic study for managing a natural reserve in ecotourism activity by estimating visitor demand function and its economic indicators.

Ibex Reserve, at south of Riyadh, was chosen to apply this study, and data collected through personal meeting to fill out questioners.

Negative Binomial Model used in estimating visitor demand.

The truncation of demand function, which show the upper and lower limits of visit number, distinguished between two visitor categories , one has 1-5 visits/ person/year and the second has 6- 48 visits /person/year.

Each category had its own demand with different elasticity.

Optimal entry fees were 3.5 SR and 6.5 SR for first and second categories respectively.

No visits would be achieved at 6.5 SR and 12 SR fees for first and second categories respectively.

The optimal number of visits per person a year was 5 and 8 for them.

Pricediscrimination policy is suggested to manage Ibex reserve, based on differences in location sensitivities and time of visits.

The study suggests establishing a club of Ibex reserve friends, which can help in developing ecotourism knowledge among visitors and local community, and help in financing reserve activities.

Based on sustainable development concept, the study results are used for a 5 year plan to manage Ibex Reserve.

Such plane will decrease the government support, from 2 million SR to 0.75 million SR.

a year, because of entry fee revenue.

The study recommendations stress on applying such study for other reserves to develop them in ecotourism activity, and finance there program of development.