An economic valuation of Kenya's mangrove forest: a case study of Mida creek, Malindi, Kenya

Abstract

This paper examines the response of a community's attitude towards mangrove deforestation and the resulting government ban in an ecoregion setting in Malindi, Kenya. We explore determinants of quality mangrove stands and amount of the community's WTP to conserve the mangroves. We employ [he Tobit regression framework [0 censor the nil! responses on the left censoring and the protest bids or outliers on the right censoring, We then deploy the Heckman's two step simple correction model to explain the significance of the inverse mills ratio on the WTP and improve the significance levels of the variables of our interest. The main findings of the study are that the local community-at Mida creek is WTP kshs 98,245 a month which translates to kshs 3. 6 million a month when aggregated across the total coastal population estimated at 840516 individuals using the 1999 census to conserve mangroves, income and monthly time volunteered by the respondents to work in the conservation program's work as well as the rate of mangrove deforestation are the major determinants of the amount of WTP and also are important correlates of WTP. The main recommend policies that favour conservation of mangrove forests and improve sustainable utilization of the resource other than imposing a ban were reintroducing the exports for mangrove timber and institute subsidies to the licensed cutters otherwise a tax followed by charges and lastly charitable funds can be used to finance mangrove conservation activities