Valuing Non-Market Recreation Goods: An Evaluative Survey of the Literature on the Travel Cost and Contingent Valuation Methods

Garey Durden and Jason Shogren

The Review of Regional Studies, 1988, vol. 18, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: The development of alternate means for measuring the benefits of non-marketed recreation goods has occupied many economists since the Flood Control Act of 1936.1 In particular, the respective work of Hotelling in the 1940s, Clawson and Knetsch (1966), Prewitt (1949) and Davis (1963) in the 1960's laid the foundation for two currently used procedures, travel cost (TCM) and contingent valuation (CVM). The purpose of this paper is to survey and critically evaluate the literature on the two methods. Although both TCM and CVM provide consumer surplus measures generated from simulated market demand curves as the best estimates of social benefits, there are fundamental differences between the two. In what follows, the travel cost and contingent valuation methods are explained and the advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed. This is done to provide guidance as to which method might be more appropriately used in a given situation.

Date: 1988
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