title: Walk on the wild side: estimating the global magnitude of visits to protected areas.
abstract: How often do people visit the world's protected areas (PAs)? Despite PAs covering one-eighth of the land and being a major focus of nature-based recreation and tourism, we don't know. To address this, we compiled a globally-representative database of visits to PAs and built region-specific models predicting visit rates from PA size, local population size, remoteness, natural attractiveness, and national income. Applying these models to all but the very smallest of the world's terrestrial PAs suggests that together they receive roughly 8 billion (8 x 109) visits/y-of which more than 80% are in Europe and North America. Linking our region-specific visit estimates to valuation studies indicates that these visits generate approximately US $600 billion/y in direct in-country expenditure and US $250 billion/y in consumer surplus. These figures dwarf current, typically inadequate spending on conserving PAs. Thus, even without considering the many other ecosystem services that PAs provide to people, our findings underscore calls for greatly increased investment in their conservation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Balmford
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jonathan M H
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Green
authors.affiliation: World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C., United States of America.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Beresford
authors.affiliation: World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C., United States of America.
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C., United States of America.
authors.forename: Robin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Naidoo
authors.affiliation: UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Walpole
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Manica
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017753:Ecosystem; D005060:Europe; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009656:North America; D011998:Recreation / Q000191:economics* / Q000523:psychology; D014195:Travel / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*