Travel cost demand model based river recreation benefit estimates with on‐site and household surveys: Comparative results and a correction procedure

Abstract

Past recreation studies have noted that on‐site or visitor intercept surveys are subject to over‐sampling of avid users (i.e., endogenous stratification) and have offered econometric solutions to correct for this. However, past papers do not estimate the empirical magnitude of the bias in benefit estimates with a real data set, nor do they compare the corrected estimates to benefit estimates derived from a population sample. This paper empirically examines the magnitude of the recreation benefits per trip bias by comparing estimates from an on‐site river visitor intercept survey to a household survey. The difference in average benefits is quite large, with the on‐site visitor survey yielding $24 per day trip, while the household survey yields $9.67 per day trip. A simple econometric correction for endogenous stratification in our count data model lowers the benefit estimate to $9.60 per day trip, a mean value nearly identical and not statistically different from the household survey estimate.