Economic Valuation of Pi -Salman Wetland in Asadabad County (Hamedan Province) in order to Ecotourism Development

Economic valuation of environmental resources is allocated great part of environmental economic studies. Environmental economist believed that economic valuation is necessary for non-market and environmental of resource services. The purpose of this paper is determining of the recreational and environmental value of Pir-Salman wetland in Asadabad county (Hamedan Province) services. So, for this, individual travel cost method is used in Backer household production function framework. Accordingly, recreational production function is estimated for calculation of travel shadow price. Then, travel demand function is estimated by travel shadow price data. In this study, data are gathered from 73 visitors as random sampling. Questionnaire filled in spring and summer of 2014. The results show that the time, distance and costs of travel are effective factors on production recreation and recreation marginal cost, with the assumption of competitive conditions, is equivalent to 208800 Rials per days which is shadow price of recreation. Annual recreational value of wetland is 626.4 Mil Rials.  Also demand for recreation has negative relationship with the shadow price of recreation and has a positive relationship with income. On the other hand, visitor’s willingness to pay (WTP) has a significant and positive relationship with quality of the environment, educations level and age and marriage status of visitor. So, increasing environmental quality and preparing facilities in Pir-Salman wetland by private sector investing will have increased environmental and recreation value of this wetland. Also, Pir-Salman wetland tourism development strategic document preparing is necessary and inevitable to have road map for increasing of visitors and decreasing distractive environmental effects.