How Costa Rica Built Sustainable Travel Around Biodiversity
rebounding in much of the world in 2022. Wilderness is a big tourist attraction – but do countries that protect their natural environments earn a payoff in tourism revenues?Surprisingly, little research has been done on this question.
Some early studies in Africa demonstrated that people from across the world travel to find “the big five” – elephants, rhinos, buffaloes, lions and leopards.
But it remains unclear whether people will travel to see a wide variety of plants and animals, or just a select few iconic species.As scholars who study conservation and ecology, we wondered whether biodiversity – specifically, the number of species in a given place – influenced where people chose to travel for tourism.
We analyzed that question in a recently published study focused on Costa Rica, a country that markets itself to the world as green and biodiverse, and derives almost 10% of its gross domestic product from tourism activities.Our study assessed whether the opportunity to see many vertebrate animal species mattered to tourists visiting Costa Rica, and if so, how important it was compared with other features like hotels and beaches.
