Abstract
Outdoor recreation in Northwest Minnesota is popular year round, and many residents and visitors participate in activities such as hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, boating, and much more. Land available for hunting, however, is at a particular premium. Hunters overall do not appear to have enough land on which to hunt as they compete with both other hunters and state regulations. Some private land owners have land that they keep for their own hunting purposes, and some of that land is kept exclusively for hunting. Private landowners in NWMN have consistently demonstrated an unwillingness to open their land to outside consumptive recreational uses, such as hunting, even for a fee. This situation may leads to potential overuse of some land with respect to hunting, while other land is potentially underused, creating a potential “tragedy of the anticommons”. Meanwhile, hotels and resorts in the region are engaged in the ever-growing worldwide trend of ecotourism and agritourism, though they have relatively few arrangements with private land owners. In this study, a probabilistic demand approach is used to analyze strategic interaction between land owners and hunters based on the results of three surveys conducted for the State of Minnesota and the Economic Development Administration (EDA). Mechanisms to create an outcome that aligns the utility maximization strategies of land owners and hunters are suggested.
Highlights
If the costs imposed in the situation of denying land use to outside hunters are justified by the benefits otherwise realize by the private ownership of the land, the incentive to improve the situation for hunters is reduced, for it comes into direct conflict with the real or perceived benefits to land owners [8]
This study applied a Choice Wave probabilistic model to analyze the potential misalignment in decision strategies regarding land use for hunting between private land owners and hunters in northwest Minnesota
The data were taken from the Economic Development Administration (EDA) Northwest Minnesota Recreation and Land Use Survey Project
Summary
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources acknowledges the tension between private land owners and hunters. Despite the potential for additional revenue and a more efficient allocation of resources, anecdotal evidence has suggested that private landowners in NWMN have consistently demonstrated an unwillingness to open their land to outside consumptive recreational uses, such as hunting, even for a fee. The first asked private land owners in NWMN about their current land use and their willingness to accept compensation for opening land to outside parties for recreational purposes, including hunting. A potential opportunity exists to meet the demand of hunters for land by using hotels and resorts in the region that are engaged in agritourism and ecotourism Such an outcome may be able to align the utility maximization strategies of land owners and hunters, thereby increasing economic efficiency
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