Financing the sustainable management of Rwanda’s protected areas

Rwanda’s Nyungwe National Park is a biodiversity hotspot with the most endemic species in the ecoregion and the highest number of threatened species internationally. Nyungwe supplies critical ecosystem services to the Rwandan population including water provisioning and tourism services. Tourism in the Park has strong potential for financing enhanced visitor experiences and the sustainable management of the Park. The data for this research explores quantitatively the economic impacts of adjustment in Park visitation fees and tourism demand as a source of revenues to improve Park tourism opportunities and ongoing operations and maintenance. The methods developed in this research are novel in integrating the results of stated preference techniques with a regional computable general equilibrium modelling approach to capture multisectoral, direct, indirect and induced impacts. Such methods have strong potential for assessing revenue generation alternatives in other contexts where park managers are faced with the need to generate additional revenue for sustainable park management while facing diminishing budget allocations. Results of this analysis demonstrate that adjustment of Park fees has a relatively small impact on the regional economy and well-being when compared with a strategy aimed at generating increased tourism demand through investment in improving the visitor experience at Nyungwe National Park. This data archive contains regional (RCGE) and national (CGE) model runs based on the Integrated Economic–Environmental Modelling (IEEM) platform. Associated journal article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2018.1456541 .

卢旺达纽恩威国家公园（Nyungwe National Park）是生物多样性热点区域，拥有该生态区内最多的特有物种，同时拥有国际上数量最多的受威胁物种。纽恩威为卢旺达民众提供关键生态系统服务，涵盖水资源供给与旅游服务。该公园的旅游业具备巨大潜力，可通过优化游客体验与推进公园可持续管理来获取融资支持。本研究数据集旨在量化分析公园门票定价调整与旅游需求变化所产生的经济影响，以此作为收入来源，以改善公园的旅游发展条件与日常运维工作。本研究提出的方法具有创新性：将陈述偏好调查技术的研究结果与区域可计算一般均衡（RCGE）建模方法相结合，以此捕捉多部门层面的直接、间接与引致经济影响。此类方法在其他场景中具备广阔应用前景：当公园管理者面临预算拨款缩减、却需要额外收入以实现公园可持续管理时，可借助该方法评估各类创收备选方案。分析结果显示：与通过投资优化纽恩威国家公园游客体验以提升旅游需求的策略相比，调整公园门票定价对区域经济与居民福祉的影响相对有限。本数据存档包含基于综合经济-环境建模（Integrated Economic–Environmental Modelling, IEEM）平台生成的区域（RCGE）与全国（CGE）模型运行结果。相关期刊论文可通过https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2018.1456541 获取。