Modeling Recreation Demand When the Access Point Is Unknown

Yongjie Ji, Joseph Herriges and Catherine Kling

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2016, vol. 98, issue 3, 860-880

Abstract: Not observing where an individual enters a geographically large recreation area complicates the task of modeling recreation demand. Traditionally, analysts have arbitrarily defined distances on the basis of the midpoint of a river or beach segment or on the basis of the nearest access point. In this article, we draw on the aggregation literature to generate a consistent framework for incorporating information on site characteristics and travel costs gathered at a finer level than that used to obtain trip counts. We use Monte Carlo experiments to illustrate the performance of the traditional midpoint and nearest access point approximations. Our results suggest that, while the nearest access point approach often provides a good approximation to underlying preferences, use of the midpoint approach can lead to significant bias in the travel cost parameter and corresponding welfare calculations. Finally, we use our approach to model recreation demand for the major river systems in Iowa using data from the 2009 Iowa Rivers and River Corridors Survey.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aav096 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Modeling Recreation Demand When the Access Point Is Unknown (2016)
Working Paper: Modeling Recreation Demand When the Access Point Is Unknown (2016)
Working Paper: Modeling Recreation Demand when the Access Point is Unknown (2013)
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:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:3:p:860-880.

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Madhu Khanna, Brian E. Roe, James Vercammen and JunJie Wu

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().