A travel cost assessment of the demand for recreation in Swiss forests

Nicolas Borzykowski (), Andrea Baranzini and David Maradan
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Nicolas Borzykowski: University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Haute École de Gestion Genève (HEG-Ge)
David Maradan: University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Haute École de Gestion Genève (HEG-Ge)

Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, 2017, vol. 98, issue 3, No 3, 149-171

Abstract: Abstract This paper analyzes the demand for recreation in Swiss forests using the individual travel cost method. We apply a two-steps approach, i.e., a hurdle zero-truncated negative binomial model, that allows accounting for a large number of non-visitors caused by the off-site phone survey and over-dispersion. Given the national scale of the survey, we group forest zones to assess consumer surpluses and travel cost elasticities for relatively homogeneous forest types. We find that forest recreation activities are travel cost inelastic and show that recreation in Swiss forests provides large benefits to the population. The most populated area is associated with greater consumer surpluses, but the lack of recreational infrastructure may cause a lower recreational benefit in some zones. For these zones, recreational benefits may be lower than costs caused by maintenance. More efficient management would require either improving recreational infrastructure thus increasing benefits, or switching the forest status from recreational to biodiversity forest hence decreasing management costs.

Keywords: Travel cost method; Hurdle zero-truncated negative binomial; Forest recreation; Switzerland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1007/s41130-017-0047-4

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