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Fiordland National Park is a UNESCO world heritage site that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. An oil spill in this area could impact the visitation to not only Milford Sound, but to all of Fiordland National Park and the lower South Island. This study examined the impacts on the recreational value of Fiordland National Park under three oil spill scenarios in Milford Sound. Using a combined approach of travel cost and contingent behaviour methods revealed a consumer surplus of a visit to Fiordland National Park of NZD 534.76 and NZD 1,449.28 per person, with and without accommodation respectively. This leads to an aggregate consumer surplus estimate ranging from NZD 427.8–1,159.4 million for Fiordland National Park based on pre-COVID visitor numbers. The three oil spill scenarios represented small, medium, and large-scale oil spills, limiting various water-based activities at each step. This showed that for each increase in oil level, there was a decrease of NZD 164.10 and NZD 923.73 per person with and without accommodation respectively. This leads to an estimated minimum decrease of the welfare of visitors by 30.7–63.7 percent, or a decrease of NZD 131.3–734.0 million in the annual recreational value. Aggregate annual recreational value estimates ranging from NZD 427.8 million – NZD 1.6 billion pre-COVID19. An oil spill occurring in Milford Sound demonstrated a minimum annual recreational value decrease of NZD 131.3 million over five years. These results demonstrate the need for appropriately funded prevention and preparedness policies to minimize possible damages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food pantries provide groceries to millions of households in the United States every year. Although there is research and information on many other aspects of food pantries, including financial information such as tax valuations for donated food, there is not a literature establishing the economic value of food pantry access for clients and potential clients. We use a valuation approach from environmental economics, revealed preference travel cost modeling, in a novel application to estimate food pantry value. We use a rich administrative dataset from a food bank system in Colorado and estimate demand for pantry visits, exploiting the move of a local pantry to correct for endogeneity bias. We find that the annual value of pantry access to pantry client households is between $600 and $1000, and the value per pantry visit is between $40 and $60. If we assume these values hold nationally, our localized results imply that the collective value of food pantry access among pantry client households may be between $19 billion and $28 billion dollars annually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contingent behavior (CB) trip data, eliciting intended trip decisions with hypothetical scenarios, has been popular in recreation demand models. Unlike other stated preference methods, the temporal reliability of CB data has not been examined in recreation demand models, especially in a Kuhn-Tucker (KT) framework. This article assesses the temporal reliability of CB trip data collected over three years in KT models. We find that coefficient and welfare estimates are largely reliable over time. Our findings add confidence in using CB trip data to model demands within and beyond recreation contexts and provide insight into the broader application of KT models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relationship between decision utility and experienced utility of recreational nature visits. The former is measured as the travel cost to reach that site as routinely used by the travel cost method (TCM), and the latter is operationalized through visit‐related subjective well‐being (SWB). As such, the analysis is a test of convergent validity by examining whether ex ante TCM‐based assessment of recreational value reflecting decision utility corresponds to stated ex post SWB, reflecting experienced utility. It explores to what extent utility revealed by counts of nature visits are associated with self‐reported, visit‐related SWB relating to that same visited site. The analysis uses two existing datasets providing information on (i) 3672 recreational visits to green/blue spaces in England over the course of four years and (ii) 5937 recreational visits to bluespace sites across 14 European countries over one year. Results show a positive association between travel cost and visit‐related SWB while controlling for trip frequency and a large set of covariates, suggesting convergent validity of the two utility concepts. A breakdown by travel mode suggests this relationship only holds for trips involving motorized transport and is not present for habitual, chore‐like walking visits to the recreational site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a system of Poisson demand equations to examine the revenue potential associated with uniform, site-differentiated, and income-differentiated recreational access fees for more than 130 lakes in the state of Iowa. We also consider optimal fees in the spirit of Ramsey (1927) and demonstrate how the new insights from Banzhaf and Smith (2022) can empirically inform discussions of user fees. We find that user fees could be used to raise revenue for the maintenance of recreation infrastructure, but that they are generally regressive. Fees differentiated by income groups can attenuate (but not eliminate) this regressivity. (JEL Q26, Q51) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic potential of forest carbon sequestration is widely acknowledged. However, no consensus has been reached regarding the appropriate policy instrument for promoting carbon sequestration. In this study, we develop a dynamic framework to measure the effects and efficiencies of alternative carbon policies. A stylized optimal control model of the timber market is first employed to illustrate the mechanisms through which different policies affect the decision making of the forest sector at the extensive margin (i.e., changing forest areas) and the intensive margin (i.e., changing harvest ages). We then introduce carbon price projections and species‐specific production information into a multi‐age dynamic timber market model. Different carbon policies are simulated numerically. Our results reveal that a carbon tax on forest emissions without compensating for sequestration leads to net carbon emissions and, thus, is the least efficient policy choice. Further, policies that do not increases carbon uptake at the intensive margin result in very high efficiency losses. A per‐hectare land subsidy may be more than 10 times more expensive than a per‐ton carbon tax and subsidy policy or a carbon subsidy policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]