The Travel Cost Model for Lake Recreation: A Comparison of Two Methods for Incorporating Site Quality and Substitution Effects

Abstract

This paper empirically illustrates how different assumptions regarding recreationists' decision-making behavior affect the predicted changes in recreational activity given a water quality improvement. A multinomial logit model, which reallocates visits away from other sites to the improved site, predicts a smaller outward shift of the recreationist's demand curve than the more traditional travel cost model, which does not assume any reallocation of visits among sites.