Unpublished Paper
Trip Equivalency for Economic Valuation in Recreation Demand Models: Implications for Compensatory Restoration and Benefits Transfer
37 (1)
(2022)
Abstract
This paper demonstrates that the number of trips a person takes to a recreation site can be treated as a utility index of value if one accepts a linear-in-income Random Utility Model (the “workhorse” of recreation demand modeling). We also demonstrate that trip counts, taken as a utility index, embodies information about site quality, the cost of reaching the site, and substitute sites. This means welfare measures can often be approximated using trips, which has important implications for compensatory restoration projects and benefits transfer. Empirical analysis based on a marine fishing RUM for Lavaca Bay, Texas shows the approximation is reliable as long as the proportion of trips to the site is relative to the total number of trips is small. Finally, we show that the inverse of the travel cost coefficient is a “portable” per trip value that may be used in benefit transfer. We refer to our result as “trip equivalency”.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2022
Citation Information
Doug MacNair, George R Parsons, Ted Tomasi and Heath Byrd. "Trip Equivalency for Economic Valuation in Recreation Demand Models: Implications for Compensatory Restoration and Benefits Transfer" 37 (1) (2022) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/george_parsons/62/