The Economic Value of Camping using Administrative Data

This paper implements a seasonal travel cost model using administrative data from an online camping reservation system on over 71,500 individuals taking 144,000 trips to 68 campgrounds in Alberta, Canada. Using a Kuhn–Tucker modeling framework, the per trip welfare impacts of campground closures ranges from $46 to $144. The substantial heterogeneity in welfare measures across campgrounds in per trip welfare measures for the same recreational activity in the same jurisdiction raises caution about the use of simple unit transfers of recreation values. Furthermore, we assess how the value of campground trips is associated with park attributes, campground amenities, and available activities nearby.