Modelling recreation demand with respondent-reported driving cost and stated cost of travel time: A Finnish case

As the price of recreational visits is unobservable and commonly represented by researcher-assigned travel cost estimates, welfare change estimates generated by the travel cost method are ordinally measurable (Randall, 1994). For a potential solution to the resulting calibration problem we use respondent-reported driving costs and the stated cost of travel time, measured by willingness to pay to reduce travel time, to represent the individual trip price. Onsite data from a hiking area in Finland are used. After considering visitors perceptions of driving cost and travel time, models with individual driving costs and stated cost of travel time are compared to standard specifications based on a uniform rate of driving cost and wage-based time cost. The use of respondent-reported driving costs appears to be a working approach for calibrating the benefit measures. The stated cost of time was logically related to visitor and trip characteristics and had plausible effects on benefit estimates.