Estimating the Recreational Values of Addis Ababa Parks Using the Travel Cost Method: The Case of Hamle 19 and Future Parks

Recreation is essential to an individual’s health, socialization and general well-being. It can be used to discover new talents. It should be noted that the recreation field recognizes the importance of physical activities in the lives of everyone and the benefits of sport participation for some, but it does not limit itself to sport in the delivery of leisure opportunities and services. This study was conducted to estimate the recreational value of parks in Addis Ababa. The study encompasses the analysis of the data collected from 180 randomly selected sample visitors of two parks selected purposely from Addis Ababa recreation sites. To measure the recreational economic benefits from the recreation site, Individual Travel Cost Method (ITCM) was employed. The ITCM was preferred to Zonal TCM in this study because of its statistical efficiency. In the selection of a model, the number of visits was truncated. To estimate the annual recreational values, the Truncated Negative Binomial model was employed and found Birr 18,239,782.05 and 19,389,895.00 for Hamle 19 and Future parks, respectively per year. This study is limited only the recreational values of the two parks excluding other use values and non-use values of the sites. Further research is therefore recommended to estimate the total economic value of those sites.