Shifting demand for winter outdoor recreation along the North Shore of Lake Superior under variable rates of climate change: A finite-mixture modeling approach
Jordan W. Smith,
Erin Seekamp,
Allie McCreary,
Mae Davenport,
Mark Kanazawa,
Kerry Holmberg,
Bruce Wilson and
John Nieber
Ecological Economics, 2016, vol. 123, issue C, 1-13
Abstract:
Many communities located in natural resource rich landscapes have transitioned to tourism-based economies. This transition might not be sustainable, as climate and environmental change have unknown effects on the visitation patterns of outdoor recreationists and tourists. We address this uncertainty by estimating shifts in the demand for outdoor recreation destinations along Minnesota's North Shore region of Lake Superior under a range of projected climatic and environmental conditions. We also employ a finite-mixture modeling approach to capture the preference heterogeneity across North Shore visitors. Our findings indicate projected climate and environmental changes are not likely to significantly affect visitation patterns in the next 20years. However, utilizing a finite-mixture modeling approach enabled us to identify distinct types of visitors with divergent visitation behaviors under altered climate and environmental conditions. Our findings suggest that the demand for outdoor recreation along the North Shore will be relatively stable in the near future, however different types of visitors will respond to warming winter conditions in divergent ways. Shifting visitation patterns under climate and environmental change may have more drastic alterations to the economic well-being of the region under a longer planning horizon.
Keywords: Contingent behavior; Risk perceptions; Place meanings; Outdoor recreation demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180091530330X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:123:y:2016:i:c:p:1-13
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.12.010
Access Statistics for this article
Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland
More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().