Travel Cost Approach

Most travel cost models of the demand for recreation trips are estimated with single-day trips only. By survey design or data construction, multiple-day trips are excluded. When multiple-day trips comprise more than a minor share of total trips, this omission eliminates critical evidence about the value of recreation, not just for those taking multiple-day trips, but for those taking single-day trips as well. We argue that analysts can and should combine trips of different lengths in a single demand function and explain how this practice is consistent with demand and welfare estimation for other goods.

The only zoo of Nepal, Central Zoo, receives over 800,000 visitors annually.  Economic valuation of the zoo was conducted to identify contributions made by the zoo to the economy as well as environmental awareness level of the visitor. The relevant information was collected using questionnaire survey, key informant interview, direct observation, direct count and focus group discussion. Several economic tools, including
travel cost method, were employed for analysis.

There exists a significant gap on the issue of Willingness to Pay (WTP) studies of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), particularly those located in the South West Indian Ocean basin. Mauritius, which is a very popular tourist destination, provides no exception as regards to such gap. Hence, this paper intends to at least extend the literature and address the issue of WTP by exclusively focusing on a monetary valuation of the recreational activity of tourists in Mauritius within a context of sustainable development. The travel cost technique is applied for this purpose and our findings show that there is a potential for tourists to pay more than what they currently pay to visit the island. Hence, this offers local authorities with better scope for sustainable tourism by potentially extracting the corresponding Marginal WTP (MWTP) to conserve the fragile natural assets of this small island economy while safeguarding the coastal and marine ecosystems. Moreover, computation of the MWTP based on data from 21 different countries reveals that each tourist may be willing to pay $38 that could be used to protect tourism-based assets. This figure represents 5% over and above what a tourist actually pays on average to visit the island. Altogether, the paper makes a case for the government to extract this amount with the possibility of introducing an ecological tax. However, the latter must be worked out in such a manner to achieve the most effective conservation outcomes albeit with least distortionary impacts.

This article is primarily concerned with the economic consequences of World Heritage listing for the valuation of natural properties and the economic impacts of this listing. Australian data is used to throw light on this subject. Conceptual problems that arise in valuation are explored and several neglected limitations of the travel cost method for estimating the demand for visits to natural sites are mentioned. The importance of economic impact analysis in this context (especially its political ramifications) is given attention. The use of World Heritage listing for political purposes is discussed. It is argued that World Heritage listing favours the long-term conservation of natural properties.

Discusses the implications of the economic valuation of natural resources used for tourism and relates this valuation to the concept of total economic valuation.  It demonstrates how applications of the concept of total economic valuation can be supportive of the conservation of natural resources used for tourism.  Techniques for valuing tourism’s natural resources are then outlined and critically evaluated.  Consideration is given to travel cost methods, contingent valuation methods, and hedonic pricing approaches before concentrating on current developments of valuation techniques, such as choice modelling.  The general limitations of existing methods are considered and it is argued that more attention should be given to developing guidelines that will identify ‘optimally imperfect methods’.  An overall assessment concludes this article.

Global biodiversity loss and its consequences for human welfare and sustainable development have become major concerns.  Economists have, therefore, given increasing attention to the policy issues involved in the management of genetic resources.  To do so, they often apply empirical methods developed in behavioral and experimental economics to estimate economic values placed on genetic resources.  This trend away from almost exclusive dependence on axiomatic methods is welcomed.  However, major valuation methods used in behavioral economics raise new scientific challenges. Possibly the most important of these include deficiencies in the knowledge of the public (and researchers) about genetic resources, implications for the formation of values of supplying information to focal individuals, and limits to rationality.

These issues are explored for stated-preference techniques of valuation (e.g., contingent valuation) as well as revealed preference techniques, especially the travel cost method.  They are illustrated by Australian and Asian examples.  Taking into account behavioral and psychological models and empirical evidence, particular attention is given to how elicitation of preferences, and supply of information to individuals, influences their preferences about biodiversity. Policy consequences are outlined.

We have implicitly argued in the last section that a dynamic iterative survey mechanism may well need to be employed in the design of contingent valuation survey instruments in order to improve the accuracy of responses. Furthermore, due to the current inaccuracy of hedonic and travel cost approaches for valuing public goods, the least cost method, in our view, for establishing anchor or true individual values for testing alternative survey instruments is to use laboratory experiments. The objective of these experiments should be the development of the most simple survey design which gives accurate responses subject to the budget of the investigator. Is a complex iterative voting procedure required? How fast will such a procedure converge to ‘true’ values? What is the effect on incentives of relaxing the unanimity voting feature for large groups? All of these operational questions can at least qualitatively be answered in an experimental laboratory setting. This approach would allow rapid resolution of a number of problems which have developed in the application of the contingent valuation approach. First, the large difference between economic measures of willingness to accept and willingness to pay may be greatly reduced by application of demand revealing mechanisms. Any remaining difference between the two measures might then be properly attributed to psychological, ethical or other complicating factors. Second, the consistently large differences between the iterative bidding and payment card measures of willingness to pay suggests that one of the procedures might be more accurate than the other. Laboratory experimentation should be able to quickly identify the superior procedure. Third, contingent valuation studies which involve uncertainty have not proven successful. In a study of the willingness to pay to contain toxic wastes undertaken by Cummings and reported on in Schulze et al. (1983) nearly half of the respondents were willing to contribute the same amount of money for 50 percent odds of containment as for 100 percent odds of containment. Does this result indicate a failure of the expected utility hypothesis or a failure to perceive or comprehend probabilities by a large sub-sample of individuals? Or, is the survey at fault? Again the least cost approach for resolving these questions is likely to be a laboratory setting. Finally, individuals may have severe perception problems with the timing and method of payment used to collect bids for public goods. Schulze et al. (1983) report on a large divergence in the value of preserving visibility for visitors at the Grand Canyon using monthly payments in the form of higher electric utility bills to collect payment as compared to collecting higher daily entrance fees. Note that the first method hypothetically collects a regular payment on a monthly basis while the second hypothetically collects payments only if respondents visit the Grand Canyon. The first method implied an overall larger total benefit of preserving visibility than the second. Again, laboratory experiments could readily determine the relative accuracy of alternative temporal payment mechanisms.

Logit models are widely used in recreation studies, but connecting the model to a theory of utility-maximizing behavior has proved difficult. Random utility maximization is widely cited as a supporting theory, but it correctly applies only to a single discrete choice, not to the series of choices that characterizes recreation behavior. I show that a logit model with repeated choices can instead be viewed as a system of demand equations satisfying integrability conditions for consistency with utility maximization. The proposed approach provides a theoretical foundation for repeated logit and permits the calculation of theoretically valid, income-adjusted welfare measures. 2

This paper uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration to estimate the coefficients of the determinants of international tourism demand for Zimbabwe for the period 1998 to 2005. The results show that taste formation, transport costs, changes in global income and certain specific events have a significant impact on international tourism demand. This implies that the improvement of international tourism infrastructure (in order to reduce travel costs and enhance the quality of services to tourists) so as to reinforce taste formation are important for attracting more international tourists to Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the authorities can potentially increase international tourism demand for the country by promoting pleasant events in the country.

Recreational fishing value of the Brazilian Pantanal is measured using travel cost method (TCM). We compare non-linear, Poisson and negative binomial count data models to estimate recreational fishing trip demands. The count data and truncated models are used primarily to account for non-negative integer and truncation properties of recreational fishing trips as suggested by the recreation valuation literature. The results

Nowadays, the transport goods problem occupies an important place in the economic life of modern societies. The pickup and delivery problem with time windows (PDPTW) is one of the problems which a large part of the research was interested. In this paper, we present a a brief literature review of the VRP and the PDPTW, propose our multicriteria approach based on genetic algorithms which allows minimize the compromise between the vehicles number, the total tardiness time and the total travel cost. And this, by treating the case where a customer can have multiple suppliers and one supplier can have multiple customers

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the basic ideas underlying social cost-benefit analysis, consider some of the limitations of the analysis, such as those involving measurement issues and philosophical questions, and to outline procedures that can be followed in applying social cost-benefit analysis to the evaluation of environmental spillovers and natural resource use. Subsequently, the valuation of spillovers that have an impact on marketed commodities is discussed and the methods for valuing of changes in environments or natural resources that involve non-marketed economic impacts are considered.

To date, only a handful of studies have empirically investigated the relationship between school locations and their constituencies—ie, the accessibility of schools. This article makes a contribution by presenting an in-depth case study of school accessibility in three counties in West ...

The PDPTW is an optimization vehicles routing problem which must meet requests for transport between suppliers and customers satisfying precedence, capacity and time constraints. We present, in this paper, a genetic algorithm for optimization of a multi pickup and delivery problem with time windows (m-PDPTW). We purposes a brief literature review of the PDPTW, present an approach based on genetic algorithms to give a satisfying solution to the m-PDPTW minimizing the total travel cost.

The minimum travel cost is a new approach to solve the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). The TSP library website (TSPLIB) provides several TSP problems with their best known solutions as a means to test any proposed solution. The present paper successfully applies the minimum travel cost algorithm to the 17 nodes A-TSP17 problem which has the value of 39 for its best known solution.

The PDPTW is an optimization vehicles routing problem which must meet requests for transport between suppliers and customers satisfying precedence, capacity and time constraints. We present, in this paper, a genetic algorithm for optimization of a multi pickup and delivery problem with time windows (m-PDPTW). We purposes a brief literature review of the PDPTW, present an approach based on genetic algorithms to give a satisfying solution to the m-PDPTW minimizing the total travel cost.

The PDPTW is an optimization vehicles routing problem which must meet requests for transport between suppliers and customers satisfying precedence, capacity and time constraints. We present, in this paper, a genetic algorithm for optimization of a multi pickup and delivery problem with time windows (m-PDPTW). We purposes a brief literature review of the PDPTW, present an approach based on genetic algorithms to give a satisfying solution to the m-PDPTW minimizing the total travel cost.

... Following the now famous letter by Hotelling (1947), the TCM employs the assumption that the costs of travelling between an individual's residence and a recreation site are a proxy for the price of a recreation trip. The model ...

We have implicitly argued in the last section that a dynamic iterative survey mechanism may well need to be employed in the design of contingent valuation survey instruments in order to improve the accuracy of responses. Furthermore, due to the current inaccuracy of hedonic and travel cost approaches for valuing public goods, the least cost method, in our view, for