ABSTRACT
Increased environmental awareness and public involvement in decision-making activities have also contributed to the need for managers to better understand and articulate the human values associated with recreation and other amenity resources. This chapter describes benefits-based management (BBM), its origins, how it differs from other recreation management approaches, and its current status, beginning with a brief discussion of benefits and their relation to recreation activities and experiences. The Snowbird state-of-knowledge workshop and the resulting text created considerable demand to translate how information about the benefits of amenity goods and services could be used by public natural resource policy makers, planners, and managers. BBM requires that the managing agency target explicitly stated types of “benefit opportunities” that will be provided at designated sites and areas and then write and implement time-bound management objectives and prescriptions developed to ensure that these targeted benefit opportunities will be provided.
