Abstract
We present the results of a new, tournament-style design of a contingent choice survey about management options at North Cascades National Park (NCNP). In our tournament-style survey, each respondent explicitly ranks several sets of scenarios and, in addition, several other rankings are implicit. Inclusion of the implicit rankings leads to some differences in coefficient estimates but almost no differences in valuation measures. This suggests that the tournament-style format can increase the efficiency of estimates, although further investigation is needed. We find strong evidence of nonuse values for both cultural and natural resource protection; indeed, nonuse values seem to dominate preferences even for those who have visited NCNP. We further find that respondents in general seem to value the protection of natural resources more than the protection of cultural resources, although both are valuable.
Highlights
We present a new design for contingent choice surveys: a tournament-style contingent ranking exercise
The tournament design should in principle increase efficiency, if as suggested in the literature (Ben-Akiva, Morikawa, & Shiroishi, 1991; Hausman & Ruud, 1987) respondents are more certain of their preferences for highly ranked scenarios
Respondents value water quality and endangered species protection more than cultural preservation; wilderness preservation was valued slightly more than cultural preservation. These kinds of results can help park managers decide how to allocate their scarce resources
Summary
We present a new design for contingent choice surveys: a tournament-style contingent ranking exercise. We implement our tournament-style design in an internet survey about management options at North Cascades National Park (NCNP) in Washington State. The park’s general management plan (National Park Service, 1988) emphasizes both natural and cultural resources, so our survey allows us to measure the relative values of natural and cultural resource protection. We present results for the two groups of respondents separately as well as for the two groups pooled together This enables us to show that there are important nonuse values for this unit of the U.S National Park System. We present the NCNP survey and discuss the results, emphasizing three things: the importance of nonuse values; whether including implicit rankings changes the results; and the relative values of natural and cultural resource protection.
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