A demand-based management option to address boat congestion at the Sundays River Estuary, Eastern Cape, South Africa

Abstract

The Sundays River Estuary situated in the Eastern Cape is an example of a South African Estuary experiencing congestion externalities, mainly vis-à-vis motorised boat use. This paper employs a choice model to estimate people’s preferences for less boat congestion on the Sundays River Estuary. The results show that visitors to the estuary are willing to trade off a levy of ZAR 35/a (in addition to what they already pay) for a reduction of boat congestion during peak periods (only). This paper proposes that this amount be set as a user charge to manage excess recreational boat use.

Keywords: estuary, choice experiment, implicit prices, conditional logit, random parameter logit