Alternatives For Incorporating Opportunity Cost Of Time In Recreation Demand Models

Abstract

The importance of accounting for a respondent’s travel time in recreation demand models is well established. In practice, most analysts use a fixed fraction of the respondent’s wage rate to value travel time. However, other approaches have been suggested in the literature. In this paper revealed and stated preference data on Iowa wetland usage is used to explore various specifications of travel time. It is shown that the choice of a particular specification has a direct impact on welfare estimates as well as the consistency between revealed and stated preference data.