Recreation Demand Travel Cost Model

The recreation demand travel cost model values a recreation site — a national park, beach, lake, or heritage attraction — by exploiting the fact that visitors reveal how much the experience is worth to them through the cost they incur to get there. Although most such sites charge little or no entry fee, people from farther away must spend more on distance, time, and expenses, and they visit less often as a result. By relating visit frequency to travel cost across visitors or origin zones, the analyst traces out a demand curve for the site and recovers the consumer surplus that visitors enjoy — a money measure of the site's recreational use value. The approach was made operational by Marion Clawson and Jack Knetsch in Economics of Outdoor Recreation (1966), building on Harold Hotelling's earlier insight, and it remains the workhorse revealed-preference method for nonmarket recreation valuation.