Economic Valuation of an Urban Lake Recreational Park: Case of Taman Tasik Cempaka in Bandar Baru Bangi, Malaysia

Abstract

There is growing public support for an outdoor, nature-based urban park, which offers the local population a wide range of recreational services for an improved quality of life. This study estimates the economic value of recreational benefits for the case of a lake-based urban park known as Taman Tasik Cempaka (TTC) in Bandar Baru Bangi in Selangor, Malaysia. The Travel Cost Method (TCM) was used to generate the demand function for park visitation and the recreational benefits were estimated using the Poisson and Negative Binomial (NB) models. The net benefits of recreation per visitor were evaluated at MYR 6.2 per trip while the price elasticity of demand was highly inelastic at −0.48. The result provides support for the imposition of an entrance fee and the subsequent revenue collection may be used for park upkeep and conservation.