Water quality advisory impacts on recreation behaviour and associated economic costs

Abstract

One of the major rationales for improving water quality is to increase the benefits and enjoyment of water-based recreation yet quantifying these behavioural responses and values remains challenging. We apply a recreation demand model using a large, multi-year data set on camping trips and water quality advisories across provincial parks in Alberta. The recreation data includes information on over 447,000 trips by 225,700 individuals over a five-year period. We use a nested logit model to understand people’s recreation choices to one of 76 campgrounds. We find that the presence of a water quality advisory has a negative impact on the likelihood of visiting an affected campground. On the one hand, this suggests that advisories work in limiting human contact with unsafe water, but these behavioural changes also carry economic costs. We estimate that the welfare costs of a beach advisory are $14 per camping trip. We use the model to evaluate the welfare impacts of removing all beach advisories. These results can be used to inform the design of policies aimed to improve lake water quality.