IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/toueco/v1y1995i1p5-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Recreation User Fees: An Australian Empirical Investigation

Author

Listed:
  • Bruce Knapman

    (Centre for Applied Economic Research and Analysis, James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville, Australia 4812)

  • Natalie Stoeckl

    (University of Canberra, PO Box 1, Belconnen, Canberra, Australia 2616)

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that increasing tourism and recreation usage of natural resources in Australia has placed heavy demands on those responsible for visitor management. The consequent need for more revenue has led local government and national park management to contemplate extended implementation of the ‘user pays' principle. However, user pays may be rejected on the grounds that it is not a first-best pricing policy, and/or on the grounds that public resources funded out of the public purse should be freely available. It has been suggested in the case of entry fees to national parks that they penalize the poor. This paper uses empirical estimates of demand curves for two World-Heritage-listed national parks — Kakadu and Hinchinbrook Island — to investigate the impact of entry fees on visitation and revenue, and the efficiency of fees as a revenue-raising device. An examination of visitors' socio-economic characteristics allows some comment on the equity issue. It is concluded that modest entry fees would have little impact on visitor numbers; that, provided the administrative costs of fee imposition are not prohibitive, entry fees are not only a good potential source of revenue, but also impose smaller efficiency costs than the income taxation system; and that fees may well constitute a progressive tax.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruce Knapman & Natalie Stoeckl, 1995. "Recreation User Fees: An Australian Empirical Investigation," Tourism Economics, , vol. 1(1), pages 5-15, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:toueco:v:1:y:1995:i:1:p:5-15
    DOI: 10.1177/135481669500100102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/135481669500100102
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/135481669500100102?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jun-Ya Liu & Qun-Ji Li & Gary Sigley & Hua Quan, 2021. "How Will the Cost Change after Transformation in Public Nature-Based Attractions? A Framework and Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-14, June.
    2. Farr, Marina & Stoeckl, Natalie & Alam Beg, Rabiul, 2014. "The non-consumptive (tourism) ‘value’ of marine species in the Northern section of the Great Barrier Reef," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 89-103.
    3. Chung, Jin Young & Kyle, Gerard T. & Petrick, James F. & Absher, James D., 2011. "Fairness of prices, user fee policy and willingness to pay among visitors to a national forest," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 1038-1046.
    4. Asensi Descals-Tormo & José-Ramón Ruiz-Tamarit, 2024. "Tourist choice, competitive tourism markets and the effect of a tourist tax on producers revenues," Tourism Economics, , vol. 30(2), pages 283-300, March.
    5. Stoeckl, Natalie & Condie, Scott & Anthony, Ken, 2021. "Assessing changes to ecosystem service values at large geographic scale: A case study for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    6. Eugenio-Martin, Juan L., 2011. "Assessing social carrying capacity of tourism destinations with random utility models/Evaluación de la capacidad de carga social de los destinos turísticos con modelos de utilidad aleatoria," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 29, pages 881-902, Diciembre.
    7. Marina Farr & Natalie Stoeckl & Rabiul Alam Beg, 2011. "The efficiency of the Environmental Management Charge in the Cairns management area of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 55(3), pages 322-341, July.
    8. Becker, Nir, 2007. "Price discrimination as a policy tool for Nature Reserve Management," MPRA Paper 21867, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Greiner, Romy & Rolfe, John, 2003. "Estimating consumer surplus and elasticity of demand of tourist visitation to a region in North Queensland using contingent valuation," 2003 Conference (47th), February 12-14, 2003, Fremantle, Australia 57881, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    10. Francisco López-del-Pino & José M. Grisolía, 2018. "Pricing Beach Congestion," Tourism Economics, , vol. 24(4), pages 449-472, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:toueco:v:1:y:1995:i:1:p:5-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.