ABSTRACT
This chapter relates several different economic methods of measuring the value of recreation. It examines and reject the notion of using gross expenditures, costs, and market values as means of approaching a recreation value. The chapter demonstrates that interviews and travel costs are valid methods, since they are based on the concept of demand as exhibited by willingness to pay or to travel. The rapidly increasing demand for recreation, stemming from the often-cited factors of increasing population, leisure, incomes, mobility, and urbanization, calls for continuing adjustments in resource allocations. Recreation services have only recently been recognized as products of land and water resource use. Discussions of values of outdoor recreation have been beset by many misunderstandings. The most relevant economic measure of recreation values, therefore, is willingness on the part of consumers to pay for outdoor recreation services. The primary recreation benefits, or values, are in general taken to be expressions of the consumers’ willingness to pay for recreation services.
