Willingness to Pay and Entrepreneurial Prospect of Estate Landscaping in the Tamale Metropolis in the Northern Region of Ghana

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Abstract

Land degradation considerably reduces productivity of land base upon which the well-being of humanity depends and this significantly affects quality of water, food, air and climate. Aside its aesthetic value, landscaping is one of the ways of reducing environmental degradation. This paper evaluates entrepreneurial prospect of estate landscaping in the Tamale Metropolis by assessing the profitability, clients’ willingness to pay and constraints of the landscape business. The purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to select ten (10) landscape service providers, ten (10) commercial/institutional landscape clients and eighty (80) domestic landscape clients in the study area for the interview. Despite high production cost, landscape service providers have high net income. Though inefficient, the benefit-cost ratio showed that landscaping business in Tamale Metropolis is profitable.  In general, willingness of landscape clients to pay more for landscape services is very high in the Metropolis. Since commercial/institutional clients of landscape services are more likely to be highly financially resourced, more commercial/institutional clients are willing to pay the higher bids for all the landscape services than domestic/household clients. Majority (92.5%) of both commercial/institutional and domestic clients are willing to pay more for establishment of new lawns and flower beds. Poor climatic condition was ranked as the topmost constraint, followed by inadequate capital and low public interest in landscaping. The study recommends that NGOs, private agencies and District Assembly should promote landscaping as a business in the metropolis. Individuals seeking for entrepreneurial opportunities should take advantage of the existing demand for landscape services in the Metropolis.