Demand for and Economic Value of Nonmotorized Boating Access in Rivers at US National Forests

Nonmotorized boating (NMB) is a popular recreation activity in the US National Forest System. Previous studies on NMB were from an individual river or site, which limited aggregating benefit across the system or generalizing to rivers across the country. Further, whether and how site and river characteristics affect the use of rivers for NMB activities are unknown. This study combined trip data collected from visitor surveys across the system with spatially explicit data on river characteristics in a travel cost model, and in the analysis step, characterized the economic benefit of NMB access and evaluated the effect of site and river characteristics. Net economic benefit of NMB access was estimated to be in the range of $56 to $73 per trip, depending on the modeling assumptions used. When aggregated across visits over the country, the total annual economic value of NMB access in National Forest System ranged from $92 million to $120 million. Results further suggest that site and river characteristics including water velocity, ramp availability, and rapid level were significantly related to NMB demand. Results may be useful in highlighting the use and public value of NMB access in rivers and in understanding the importance of site and river characteristics.

Effects of Ad-hoc Data Truncation and Homogeneous Preferences on Recreational Demand and Values: An Application to the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests

We estimate a travel cost model for the George Washington & Jefferson National Forests using an On-Site Latent Class Poisson Model. We show that the constraints of ad-hoc truncation and homogenous preferences significantly impact consumer surplus estimates derived from the on-site travel cost model. By relaxing the constraints, we show that more than one class of visitors with unique preferences exists in the population. The resulting demand functions, price responsive behaviors, and consumer surplus estimates reflect differences across these classes of visitors. With heterogeneous preferences, a group of ‘local residents’ exists with a probability of 8% and, on average take 113 visits.

The value of forest recreation in Azorean public parks

This study assesses the aggregated value of demand for forest recreation in the Azores using a regional travel cost model. Previous assessments of total economic value (TEV) of the Portuguese forest by Mendes (2005) and INCF (2006) consider both market services and non-market services. Non-timber benefits (NTB) such as recreation, carbon sequestration, protection of soil, and biodiversity were valued using value transfer methodologies. Forest recreation accounts for 0.65% of TEV using a unit transfer value of 2.75 Euros/per visit estimated by Loureiro and Albiac (1996). The present primary study assesses the value of forest recreation in the Azorean islands instead of a single site approach. A count data travel-cost model, taking into account characteristics of data from on-site face-to-face interviews, is used instead of contingent valuation. This study uses data from a survey of visitors to public forest parks in São Miguel, Terceira, and Pico. Visits to public forest parks are a significant component of forest recreation, attracting more than 18% of residents with an average of five trips per year. The typical visitant is male, 38 years of age, and has secondary education. Those interviewed engage in physical activities, walking and running, as well as picnics, an opportunity to meet friends and family during the summer. The profile of this summer visitors changes to a more hard engagement in running and walking activities during autumn and spring. 33% of visitors are fully satisfied with their visiting experience and the quality of public forest parks. The value of a daily visit is 13.66 euros, and the total economic value exceeds 3 million euros in all Azorean parks for 275 thousand visitors. A conservative assessment of the benefit of forest recreation is higher than the total market value of wood production.

¿Es relevante la biodiversidad en la decisión de visita a los parques nacionales en el Perú?

<div data-canvas-width="450.13143999999994">The aim was to determine the importance of the biodiversity on the decision to visit six Natural Parks of Peru. For this, a sample of tourists and the discrete travel cost model are used to estimate the demand of multiple places with different attributes. The results confirm that the probability of choice depends on the access routes, the biodiversity, the distance, and the cost of the trip. The effect of the biodiversity is less important than that of access routes. A conservation policy that considers these attributes will be key for the management of the biodiversity.</div>

Navigating the corn maze: Customizing travel cost models to value market segments in heterogeneous industries

Agritourism is an example of a growing and important industry to rural communities in the United States seeking to leverage interest in their natural resource, agricultural, and other heritage assets. We use survey data and a flexible travel cost model to estimate the part-worth consumer surplus (CS) values of Western US agritourism trips for different regions, activities, and traveler types. Given the rural nature of agritourism may require interested travelers to come from long distances, we also pay particular attention to and compare travelers’ marginal and cumulative travel costs to evaluate the impact on CS estimates. Results indicate that trip and traveler heterogeneity, if unaccounted for, may lead to misinformed policy and management decisions.

Measuring the welfare effects of forests: an application of the travel cost model

In this paper, a travel cost model was applied to the case of firewood collection to assess how the inclusion of household fixed effects and how assumptions regarding conditions in the local labor market impacted resulting welfare estimates. To assess these impacts, a unique household panel data set from Kagera, Tanzania was used. It was estimated that, under the assumption of constrained labor markets, households in the Kagera region of Tanzania are willing-to-pay, on average, $120 per year (2016 USD) for access to local forests. These estimated figures were nearly 50 per cent higher when household fixed effects were excluded and nearly 10 per cent higher under the assumption of perfect labor markets. In addition, these results support previous research showing that, in many developing countries, households' demand for firewood is inelastic and that households would be willing to spend a significant amount of their resources on forest access.