Recreation services have only recently been recognized as products of land and water resources. As such, they offer problems of evaluation that do not occur when dealing with most goods and services—for example steel and lumber. Conflicting demands for commodities such as these are resolved largely in the marketplaces of the private economy, where users bid against each other for the limited supplies. Outdoor recreation, however, has developed largely as a non-market commodity. This absence of a market makes it necessary to impute values to the production of recreation services.
No goods or services are priceless. There is an individual and collective limit to how much we will give up to enjoy the services of any outdoor recreation facility or to preserve any scenic resource. It is our belief, therefore, that the most relevant economic measure of recreation values is willingness on the part of consumers to pay for outdoor recreation services. This set of values is comparable to economic values established for other commodities, for it is the willingness to give up on the part of consumers that establishes values throughout the economy.
Economists are experimenting with several ways of measuring the recreationists "willingness to pay." One of these, the direct interview method briefly described below, shows promise of being reasonably effective.
Through a properly constructed interview approach one can elicit from recreationists information concerning the maximum price they would pay in order to avoid being deprived of the use of a particular area for whatever use they may make of it. The procedure is based on the assumption that the recreationist has made a rational series of allocations of time and money in order to participate in the recreation being evaluated. Since the opportunity itself is available at zero or nominal price, the interview provides the means for discovering the price the person would pay if this opportunity were marketed.
The chief problem to be reckoned with is the degree of reliability that can be attached to the information the respondent provides the interviewer. Particularly on questions dealing with matters of opinion, the responses are subject to many kinds of bias. Consequently, it is advisable to phrase the questions in such a way that the recreationist is not asked to give his opinion on the propriety of charging for the use of recreation areas. In survey methodology, it has been found that the less hypothetical the question, the more stable and reliable is the response. Following this principle, the respondent ought to be a consumer of the product rather than a potential consumer. It may also be preferable to conduct the interview when the respondent is at the site of the activity. This may contribute to the accuracy of the responses by reducing his need to project from one situation to another.
The interview method was tested out on a sample of users of a forest recreation area in northern Maine. The interviews included a bidding game in which respondents could react to increased costs of visiting the area. Bids were systematically raised or lowered until the user switched his reaction from inclusion to exclusion or vice versa. The bidding questions were interspersed with a series of propositions for which the respondent was to indicate his opinion in the form of a positive, negative, or neutral reaction. His reactions to increased expenses connected with the visit constituted the essence of the bidding game.
Those interviewed included hunters, fishermen, and summer campers. Each respondent was asked questions relating to household willingness to pay, household income, years of acquaintance with the area visited, and length of visit. For the sample of 185 interviews, willingness-to-pay-per-household-day ranged from zero to $16.66, and the value that occurred most frequently was between $1.00 and $2.00 per day per household. Respondents' comments indicated that they were turning over in their minds the alternatives available in much the same way that a shopper considers the price and desirability of different cuts or kinds of meat. This, and a certain amount of internal consistency in the responses suggest that considerable weight can be attached to the interview responses for assessing a recreationist willingness to pay as a means of measuring recreation values.
Adapted from "Comparisons of Methods for Recreation Evaluation," by Jack L. Knetsch and Robert K. Davis.
A version of this article appeared in print in the May 1967 issue of Resources magazine.
