ABSTRACT
In 1962, John F. Kennedy appointed the first presidential commission on outdoor recreation, an early example of the public’s role in providing recreational opportunities. To understand how the private sector can provide more outdoor recreation, it is necessary to recognize that individuals respond to prices. From the standpoint of supplying both traditional commodities and outdoor recreation, the important public policy question is whether markets accurately reflect recreational and environmental values to consumers and producers. Product substitution is often ignored in the formulation of natural resource policy because prices faced by decision makers are often zero or nominal. In many cases, however, government interferes with the private sector’s potential by distorting markets and erecting institutions that make it prohibitively costly to establish private property rights to natural resources. Free public hunting provides an example of government’s distortion of prices in the market for outdoor recreation.
