Valuation of National Park System Visitation: The Efficient Use of Count Data Models, Meta-Analysis, and Secondary Visitor Survey Data
- 29 May 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Environmental Management
- Vol. 52 (3), 683-698
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-013-0080-2
Abstract
The National Park Service (NPS) currently manages a large and diverse system of park units nationwide which received an estimated 279 million recreational visits in 2011. This article uses park visitor data collected by the NPS Visitor Services Project to estimate a consistent set of count data travel cost models of park visitor willingness to pay (WTP). Models were estimated using 58 different park unit survey datasets. WTP estimates for these 58 park surveys were used within a meta-regression analysis model to predict average and total WTP for NPS recreational visitation system-wide. Estimated WTP per NPS visit in 2011 averaged $102 system-wide, and ranged across park units from $67 to $288. Total 2011 visitor WTP for the NPS system is estimated at $28.5 billion with a 95% confidence interval of $19.7-$43.1 billion. The estimation of a meta-regression model using consistently collected data and identical specification of visitor WTP models greatly reduces problems common to meta-regression models, including sample selection bias, primary data heterogeneity, and heteroskedasticity, as well as some aspects of panel effects. The article provides the first estimate of total annual NPS visitor WTP within the literature directly based on NPS visitor survey data.Keywords
This publication has 34 references indexed in Scilit:
- Leisure and the Net Opportunity Cost of Travel Time in Recreation Demand Analysis: An Application to Gros Morne National ParkJournal of Applied Economics, 2012
- What weight should be assigned to future environmental impacts? A probabilistic cost benefit analysis using recent advances on discountingScience of The Total Environment, 2011
- The Economic Benefits of Elk Viewing at the Jewell Meadows Wildlife Area in OregonHuman Dimensions of Wildlife, 2009
- Application of non-market valuation to the Florida Keys marine reserve managementJournal of Environmental Management, 2003
- Regression Analysis of Count DataPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1998
- Toward a Value for Guided Rafting on Southern RiversJournal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 1996
- Modeling Recreation Demand in the Presence of Unobservable Travel Costs: Toward a Travel Price ModelJournal of Environmental Economics and Management, 1995
- Estimating Social Welfare Using Count Data Models: An Application to Long-Run Recreation Demand Under Conditions of Endogenous Stratification and TruncationThe Review of Economics and Statistics, 1995
- SAS System for RegressionTechnometrics, 1992
- Primary, Secondary, and Meta-Analysis of ResearchEducational Researcher, 1976