ABSTRACT
A more comprehensive understanding of how recreational values and forest visitation rates vary across different activities enables forest managers to tailor conservation and management strategies to align with preferences among visitors, ensuring more effective allocation of budgetary resources. However, current research often focuses on only a few recreational activities, resulting in limited insights for forest managers. This study aims to expand the nature-based activities considered so that management can better serve the broader public. We conduct a travel cost analysis using a large survey-based dataset to estimate the value of nature-based recreation in national forests in the Sierra Nevada region and assess how these values differ across main activities. We categorize recreational activities into five broad groups (Passive, Active, Camping, Winter, and Other) to offer a comprehensive view of recreational preferences. A truncated negative binomial regression accounting for endogenous stratification is used to analyze the relationship between the number of trips to the forests, travel cost, activity categories, and socio-demographic variables. Our results suggest a mean consumer surplus (CS) of $65 per visit per person to national forests in the Sierra Nevada. Aggregated over annual per person visits, the total CS is approximately $313.3 million per year. Our findings reveal variations in CS across activity groups, with winter activities (e.g., skiing, snowboarding) and active activities (e.g., hiking, fishing) attracting the highest number of visits, and the highest total CS. Our results provide valuable insights for national forest managers, facilitating the strategic allocation of limited resources to recreational activities that maximize societal welfare.
Subject(s)
Conservation of Natural Resources , Recreation , Recreation/economics , Conservation of Natural Resources/economics , Humans , Forests , NevadaABSTRACT
The main objective of this study is to assess the economic value of the Brazilian Amazon's ecosystem services accruing to Brazilians based on a meta-analysis of the Brazilian valuation literature. Insight in these local values provides an important benchmark to demonstrate the importance of preserving the Brazilian Amazon forest. The review covers almost 30 years of Brazilian valuation research on the Amazon, published predominantly in Portuguese, highlighting a high degree of study and data heterogeneity. The estimated mean value of the provision of habitat for species, carbon sequestration, water regulation, recreation and ecotourism to local populations is about 410 USD/ha/year. The standard deviation is however high, reflecting a wide dispersion in the distribution of values. Between 50 and 70 percent of the variation in these values can be explained with the help of the estimated meta-regression models, resulting in considerable prediction errors when applying a within-sample resampling procedure. These findings demonstrate the need for a more robust, common ecosystem services accounting and valuation framework before these values can be scaled up and aggregated across the entire Brazilian Amazon.
