Valuing setting-based recreation for selected visitors to national forests in the southern United States.

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).

Locating spatial variation in the association between wildland fire risk and social vulnerability across six Southern states.

Wildland fire in the South commands considerable attention, given the expanding wildland urban interface (WUI) across the region. Much of this growth is propelled by higher income retirees and others desiring natural amenity residential settings. However, population growth in the WUI increases the likelihood of wildfire fire ignition caused by people, as humans account for 93% of all wildfires fires in the South. Coexisting with newly arrived, affluent WUI populations are working class, poor or otherwise socially vulnerable populations. The latter groups typically experience greater losses from environmental disasters such as wildfire because lower income residents are less likely to have established mitigation programs in place to help absorb loss. We use geographically weighted regression to examine spatial variation in the association between social vulnerability (SOVUL) and wildfire risk. In doing so, we identify "hot spots" or geographical clusters where SOVUL varies positively with wildfire risk across six Southern states--Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. These clusters may or may not be located in the WUI. These hot spots are most prevalent in South Carolina and Florida. Identification of these population clusters can aid wildfire managers in deciding which communities to prioritize for mitigation programming.

Valuing snorkeling visits to the Florida Keys with stated and revealed preference models.

Coastal coral reefs, especially in the Florida Keys, are declining at a disturbing rate. Marine ecologists and reef scientists have emphasized the importance of establishing nonmarket values of coral reefs to assess the cost effectiveness of coral reef management and remediation programs. The purpose of this paper is to develop a travel cost-contingent valuation model of demand for trips to the Florida Keys focusing on willingness to pay (WTP) to preserve the current water quality and health of the coral reefs. The stated and revealed preference models allow the marginal valuation of recreationists to adjust depending on current and planned trip commitments in valuing nonmarginal policy changes in recreational opportunities. The integrated model incorporates key factors for establishing baseline amenity values for tourist dive sites, including perceptions of reef quality and dive conditions, the role of substitute sites, and the quality and availability of tourist facilities and recreation opportunities. The travel cost and WTP model differ in identifying critical variables and provide insight into the adjustment of trip decisions across alternative destination sites and the valuation of trips. In contrast to the travel cost model, a measure of the availability of substitute sites and total recreation activities does not have a significant impact on WTP valuations reported by snorkelers. Snorkelers engage in a relatively focused set of activities, suggesting that these recreationists may not shift expenditures to other sites or other recreation activities in the Florida Keys when confronted with increased access costs for the snorkeling experience.