The Value of Nonconsumptive Wildlife Recreation in the United States

Abstract

Public interest in wildlife and wildliferelated activities extends well beyond the traditional hunting and fishing activities. In 1980, approximately 29 million individuals (16 years and older) took trips primarily to observe wildlife while 83 million (49 percent of population 16 years and older) observed specifically wildlife in both residential and nonresidential settings (USFWS 1982). Moreover, there are at least 18 national conservation or wildlife-related organizations with memberships ranging from 5,000 in the American Birding Association to 4.2 million in the National Wildlife Federation. The extent of participation in these activities reflects a substantial demand for the products of wildlife management and yet, with few notable exceptions (Cicchetti 1973; Bishop 1978; Hay and McConnell 1979, 1984), the relationship between management programs and nonconsumptive wildlife recreation has not been investigated. Just as economic studies have contributed greatly to managers' knowledge of the value of wildlife resources for fishing and hunting (Brown, Singh, and Castle 1965; Hammack and Brown 1974; Gum and Martin 1975; Bishop and Heberlein 1979; McConnell and Strand 1981; Kealy and Bishop 1986), so they can inform on the value and extent of nonconsumptive uses of wildlife, and the sensitivity of those uses to changes in management programs. In this paper we provide information for the wildlife management community and the public trustees by developing a model to estimate first, the probability of participation and second, the number of hours people observe, photograph, and feed wildlife away from the home conditional on participation. The model is used to show how participation in these activities may be changed with changes in habitat. In addition, we use it to calculate a lower bound estimate for the total benefits from nonconsumptive wildlife recreation trips in 1980. The data used for estimation are from the 1980 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (USFWS 1982).