High Altitude as an Environmental Economic Good: Estimating Its Economic Value Using Willingness to Incur Costs by Athletes

High altitude training provides acclimatization to athletes by enhancing endurance; however, this environmental service has remained unaccounted and un-priced. Therefore, this study sought to estimate economic value of high altitude services to athletes using travel cost valuation approach. This study was carried out at Iten Township in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya. Systematic simple random sampling technique was used in administering 223 structured questionnaires to respondents. Excel and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version-20) were used for data analysis. Findings from the study showed that athletes incurred estimated cost of about $9.59 per day to train at high altitude, while high altitude attributes such as experience, safety and altitude acclimatization were highly ranked as motivating factors by athletes to train in the study area. Results from statistical tests revealed that experience, age of athletes, safety and altitude effects were significantly difference in influencing athletes’ willingness to incur extra cost for altitude acclimatization. Analysis from logit model showed that experience, age of athletes, safety and altitude effects had high probability to influence athletes to train at high altitude areas. However, stochastic variable in the model showed significant difference in influencing willingness to incur cost by athletes while training at high altitude. This error term explains unobserved variables in the model which were beyond the scope of this study. In conclusion athletes are willing to incur travelling and living costs to train at high altitude areas in order to gain incremental altitude training effects as affirmed by bootstrap hypothesis testing results. Significant of this study will inform policy and decision makers on critical information while they develop sustainable infrastructure, legislation and policies for sports industry.