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Discusses how market failures can, in principle, be used to justify national parks. States the best rationale is based on existence or nonuse values instead of the recreational aspects. Shows more evidence (costs of providing and operating the parks and the magnitude of nonuse values) is needed before the case becomes compelling. (JEH)

The authors use time-series, cross-section, and panel data sets to see whether U.S. National Park System operating budget appropriations are related to inflation, visitation, size, region of the country, and type of park unit. The growth rate of the aggregate National Park Service (NPS) budget seems to increase in response to higher congestion. But neither visitation growth nor growth in acreage seems to have much effect on budget growth for individual park units. Individual park units with higher visitation do seem to have larger budgets, ceteris paribus, than do parks with lower average visitation. Judging from the findings, future research should try to explain differences among the several types of park units in the NPS as well as explaining why visitation and park size have small effects for individual park units but seem to have larger effects for the aggregate NPS operating budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]