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In this study we estimate selected visitors' demand and value for recreational trips to settings such as developed vs. undeveloped sites in U.S. national forests in the Southern United States using the travel cost method. The setting-based approach allows for valuation of multi-activity trips to particular settings. The results from an adjusted Poisson lognormal estimator corrected for truncation and endogenous stratification reveal that economic value per trip estimates are higher for wilderness compared to day-use developed settings, overnight-use developed settings, and general forest areas. Estimates of these economic values are important to resource managers because their management decisions and actions typically control recreational settings. For example, managers control developed campground capacity in a national forest, but typically not the number of campers below the capacity constraint and the number and types of activities visitors engage in during a multi-activity trip to a developed campground (within limits since some activities such as discharging a firearm are not permitted in a developed campground)., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Understanding customer satisfaction is critical to the successful operation of both privately and publicly managed recreation venues. A popular tool for assessing recreation visitor satisfaction is Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA). IPA provides resource managers, government officials, and private businesses with easy-to-understand and -use information about visitor preferences and satisfaction for selected site characteristics and management issues. Many improvements have been made to IPA since its inception, strengthening the validity of results and providing managers with knowledge for better decision making. This study adds to this list of improvements by examining the effect of trip frequency bias, or endogenous stratification, on IPA scores and then demonstrating a simple bias correction procedure. The issue of endogenous stratification was examined with three variations of an on-site sample of visitors to the Virginia Creeper Trail (VCT). Statistical tests for differences between the typical calculation of IPA scores and a weighting procedure which corrects for endogenous stratification or trip frequency bias were conducted. Findings suggested that accounting for bias, resulting from over-representation of frequent visitors, can lead to IPA results statistically different from those more conventionally calculated. By adjusting for endogenous stratification, the IPA graphs in this study provide a more accurate picture of the tastes and preferences of the visitor population. For managers, conventionally calculated IPA could lead to misclassifying the importance or performance of site characteristics or features into the wrong IPA quadrant and thus adversely affecting management of site resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors develop a contingent trip model to estimate the recreation demand for and value of a potential rail-trail site in north-east Georgia. The contingent trip model is an alternative to travel cost modelling useful for ex ante evaluation of proposed recreation resources or management alternatives. The authors estimate the empirical demand for trips using a negative binomial regression specification. Their findings indicate a per-trip consumer surplus ranging from US$18.46 to US$29.23 and a price elasticity of -0.68. In aggregate, they estimate that the rail-trail would receive approximately 416 213 recreation visits per year by area households and account for a total consumer surplus in excess of US$7.5 million. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the local economic effects of spending associated with outdoor recreation in selected rural areas in the United States. Lack of empirical evidence; Expenditures collected as part of the Public Area Recreation Visitors Study; Estimation of economic impact using regional input-output models developed from the USDA Forest Service input-output model and data base system; Results.