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Travel Cost Method/Evidence
Method evidence record

Travel Cost Method

The Travel Cost Method (TCM), developed by Harold Hotelling in 1949 and formalized by Marion Clawson and Jack Knetsch in the 1960s, is an econometric approach for valuing recreational sites and environmental amenities by inferring value from the travel costs (transportation, time, entry fees) that people incur to visit them. The core principle is that distance traveled and travel costs reveal how much people value a recreation site: those traveling far incur high costs, implying high value.

Sources recorded, not reviewed

Source record

Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.

Travel Cost Method (TCM)
Taxonomic method record · process-pipeline / economics
  • Hotelling, H. (1949). An Economic Study of the Monetary Valuation of Recreation in the National Parks. U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service. · URL
  • Clawson, M., & Knetsch, J. L. (1966). Economics of Outdoor Recreation. Johns Hopkins Press. · URL
  • English, D. B., Kellogg, F. W., & Larson, D. M. (2003). Estimating the Value of Protecting Forests from Fire. Journal of Forest Economics, 9(3), 51–73. · URL
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Curated claims

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Related methods

Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.

Taxonomic bucketContingent Valuationmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.Often confused withHedonic Pricingmachine-suggested · Relational suggestion, not evidence.

Evidence status

Sources recorded, not reviewed

Bibliographic sources are present. Claim-level evidence review has not been performed.

Sources

3 recorded citations, copied from the method source record.

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