Assessing Recreationists' Economic Benefits and Their Transferability to Other Sites

Abstract

Valuation efforts are important for policymakers to assess the effectiveness of recreation management programs and determine the optimal levels of public investment in provision of recreation opportunities. To avoid the problematic assumption that benefit estimates are equal across sites, benefit transfer is an effective tool to test the transferability of benefits to other sites. The objectives of this article are to examine benefit transfer as a pragmatic alternative to estimate values and provide empirical evidence of the validity of benefit transfer using beach access. This article explores its applicability in the leisure and recreation field and discusses implications of benefit transfer.