ABSTRACT
Ecosystem services are public goods with no market price. In this chapter, we apply the recreation demand model to estimate the value of biodiversity. Biodiversity provides an array of recreational opportunities. For example, the Yakushima World Heritage site, Southern Japan has more than 1,900 species and the unique ecosystem and natural beauty of the site attract more than 200,000 visitors per year. If the biodiversity of Yakushima was lost, most of the visitors might cancel their tour to the site. Thus, the damage to the biodiversity might be estimated using the monetary loss of recreational expenditure.
