The Social Recreation Per-Day Net Benefit of the Wildlife Amenities of a National Park

Abstract. We applied count-data travel cost methods to a truncated sample of visitors to estimate the Peneda-Gerês National Park average CS per each day of visit. As recreation demand was measured in number of days of stay, dependent variable behaviour is very specific. To overcome this situation, we propose the use of altered truncated count data models or truncated count data models on grouped data to estimate a single, on-site individual recreation demand function, where the dependent variable is the number of days spent per visit with the price (cost) of each recreation day per trip equal to out-of-pocket and time travel, plus out-of-pocket and on-site time costs. We further check the sensitiveness of coefficient estimations to alternative models and analyse the welfare measure precision by using the Delta Method and the Simulation Method of Creel and Loomis. CS is estimated to be €194 varying between €116 and €448, with Simulated Limits. This information is useful in the formulation of government policy on national parks and conservation and the determination of future natural park management. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to measure the average recreation net benefits per each day of stay generated by a national park by using the truncated altered and truncated grouped count data Travel Cost Model based on the observation of individual (not household) number of days of stay.