Theoretical and Empirical Specifications Issues in Travel Cost Demand Studies

Abstract

Abstract A travel cost demand model is derived from a utility function which postulates that individuals choose the optimal total number of site recreation days given by the product of the number and length of their recreation trips. By relaxing the assumption that on‐site time is constant across recreationists, the applicability of the travel cost method is extended. The model is estimated using a maximum likelihood procedure appropriate for the truncated sample data which is characteristic of most user‐specific recreation data. Failure to do so would result in overestimating the value of Great Lakes fishing by 3.5 times.