Economic Value of Public Access to Great Lakes Beaches

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Economic Value of Public Access to Great Lakes
Beaches

• Frank Lupi,1 Feng Song Michael Kaplowitz

1 Department of Ag, Food, Resource Economics
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife
Partnership for Ecosystem Research and
Management
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Beaches are Priceless?

• Not bought and sold in markets
• But valued by people
• Use Non market valuation techniques
• Gap in literature
• Dozens of studies on saltwater beach values
• Only a couple for GL beaches

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Use travel cost method

• Method of estimating demand and value for
  recreation related resources
• Uses time money costs of travel as the price of
  recreation trips
• Use trips price to estimate demand
• Relate this to site features
• Use to value and forecast demand response when
  site features or access change

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Demand Curve
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Shift in Demand quality/features
changedemographic changes substitute beach
changes
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Beach Recreation Model

• Usage Fn(travel costs, environmental quality)
• Behavioral Model
• How uses change when EQ changes
• Can use for economic valuation

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Beaches are Everywhere
People from Everywhere
Single person, beaches all over Were do they go?
One beach, people all over Where do they come
from?
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RUM Travel Cost
Assume an economist goes to the beach...
10 miles
Which site is better?
50 miles
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Recreational Uses/Behavioral Models(Research
steps)

• Collect data with surveys of users
• Collect data on environmental quality of sites
• Needs spatial temporal variation
• Econometric modeling
• Application

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Beach Uses

• Pilot survey
• Collected data on Michigan GL beach use
• Web survey, N3,286
• Beach visited the most in past years, N2,566
• Located 1,710 of these
• Estimated basic demand models
• Trips significantly positively related to beach
  length and fewer beach closure days

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Model Specification

• Estimated as two-level nested logit
• GL Beaches in MDEQ database
• grouped at zipcode level
• 143 site groups
• Data for Michigan residents only (our sample)

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Beach Visits Nesting Structure
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25 Most-Valued GL BeachesResidents net benefits
per predicted trip

• A trip to typical site is worth 48/day.
• The value of access to the site

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Value to Users of GL Beaches
Great Lake Value all beaches at this GL (per any trip) Total Values 13 mil trips 26 mil trips Total Values 13 mil trips 26 mil trips
Michigan 75.55 982 mil 1,964 mil
Huron 13.89 180 mil 361 mil
Erie (St.Clair) 13.28 173 mil 345 mil
Superior 2.67 35 mil 69 mil
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Whats Missing

• Trip data
• Better estimates of total trips
• Timing of trips (when in the season)
• Additional site variables
• Water clarity, slope, facilities, water temp,
  advisories at time, crowding, waves, etc.
• Good average site values
• Find advisory effects, possible stigma, but not
  ready for closure valuation via dX

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Next Steps

• Working on new model
• New survey
• More info on trips
• Additional site data
• Opportunities to apply connect with other
  research
• Acknowledgements