IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i19p8932-d1766939.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Application of the Travel Cost Method to Estimate the Economic Value of Brasília National Park

Author

Listed:
  • Humberto Angelo

    (Department of Forest Sciences, University of Brasília, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Brasília 70910-970, DF, Brazil)

  • Alexandre dos Santos Ferreira

    (Department of Forest Sciences, University of Brasília, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Brasília 70910-970, DF, Brazil)

  • Alexandre Nascimento de Almeida

    (Environmental Management Course, University of Brasília, Campus of Planaltina, Brasília 73345-010, DF, Brazil)

  • Manuella de Rezende Alvares

    (Department of Forest Sciences, University of Brasília, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Brasília 70910-970, DF, Brazil)

  • Juscelina Arcanjo dos Santos

    (Department of Forest Sciences, University of Brasília, Campus Darcy Ribeiro, Brasília 70910-970, DF, Brazil)

Abstract

Ecological parks in Brazil are facing financial difficulties due to a disputed public budget for their administration. In this context, the environmental valuation of Brasília National Park is important for the development of financing instruments. The aim of this study is to estimate the economic value of the recreational use of Brasília National Park and to determine the price–demand elasticity among visitors residing in the Federal District. This involves estimating travel costs through regression analysis using cross-sectional data collected via questionnaires administered to park visitors. The results reveal a significant impact of travel cost on park demand, in which a 1% increase in travel costs reduces the park’s visitation rate by 4.1%. The economic value of Brasília National Park was estimated at approximately USD 25 million per year, equivalent to around BRL 140 million annually, based on an exchange rate of USD 1.00 = BRL 5.50 as of April 2020.

Suggested Citation

  • Humberto Angelo & Alexandre dos Santos Ferreira & Alexandre Nascimento de Almeida & Manuella de Rezende Alvares & Juscelina Arcanjo dos Santos, 2025. "Application of the Travel Cost Method to Estimate the Economic Value of Brasília National Park," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(19), pages 1-21, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:19:p:8932-:d:1766939
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/19/8932/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/19/8932/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parsons, George R. & Wilson, Aaron J., 1997. "Incidental And Joint Consumption In Recreation Demand," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 26(01), pages 1-6, April.
    2. Loomis, John B. & Yorizane, Shizuka & Larson, Douglas M., 2000. "Testing Significance Of Multi-Destination And Multi-Purpose Trip Effects In A Travel Cost Method Demand Model For Whale Watching Trips," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 29(2), pages 1-9, October.
    3. Belcher, Richard N. & Chisholm, Ryan A., 2018. "Tropical Vegetation and Residential Property Value: A Hedonic Pricing Analysis in Singapore," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 149-159.
    4. Prayaga, Prabha & Rolfe, John & Stoeckl, Natalie, 2010. "The value of recreational fishing in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia: A pooled revealed preference and contingent behaviour model," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 244-251, March.
    5. S. Mohammadi Limaei & H. Ghesmati & R. Rashidi & N. Yamini, 2014. "Economic evaluation of natural forest park using the travel cost method (case study; Masouleh forest park, north of Iran)," Journal of Forest Science, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 60(6), pages 254-261.
    6. Frank A. Ward & Diana Beal, 2000. "Valuing Nature with Travel Cost Models," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1768, March.
    7. Amoako-Tuffour, Joe & Martınez-Espineira, Roberto, 2008. "Leisure and the Opportunity Cost of Travel Time in Recreation Demand Analysis: A Re-Examination," MPRA Paper 8573, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Chotikapanich, Duangkamon & Griffiths, William E., 1998. "Carnarvon Gorge: a comment on the sensitivity of consumer surplus estimation," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 42(3), pages 1-13.
    9. Eva Vicente & Pablo de Frutos, 2011. "Application of the travel cost method to estimate the economic value of cultural goods: Blockbuster art exhibitions," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 196(1), pages 37-63, january.
    10. John Loomis & Omer Tadjion & Philip Watson & Josh Wilson & Stephen Davies & Dawn Thilmany, 2009. "A Hybrid Individual—Zonal Travel Cost Model for Estimating the Consumer Surplus of Golfing in Colorado," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 10(2), pages 155-167, April.
    11. Navrud, StAle & Mungatana, E. D., 1994. "Environmental valuation in developing countries: The recreational value of wildlife viewing," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 135-151, November.
    12. Bruce Knapman & Natalie Stoeckl, 1995. "Recreation User Fees: An Australian Empirical Investigation," Tourism Economics, , vol. 1(1), pages 5-15, March.
    13. Beal, Diana J., 1995. "A Travel Cost Analysis of the Value of Carnarvon Gorge National Park for Recreational Use," Review of Marketing and Agricultural Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 63(02), pages 1-12, August.
    14. Saúl Torres-Ortega & Rubén Pérez-Álvarez & Pedro Díaz-Simal & Julio Manuel De Luis-Ruiz & Felipe Piña-García, 2018. "Economic Valuation of Cultural Heritage: Application of Travel Cost Method to the National Museum and Research Center of Altamira," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-13, July.
    15. Carpio, Carlos E. & Wohlgenant, Michael K. & Boonsaeng, Tullaya, 2008. "The Demand for Agritourism in the United States," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 33(2), pages 1-16.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Farr, Marina & Stoeckl, Natalie & Beg, Rabiul Alam, 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 1-20, September.
    2. Roberto Martinez-Espineira & Joe Amoako-Tuffour, 2008. "Multi-destination and multi-purpose trip effects in the analysis of the demand for trips to a remote recreational site," EERI Research Paper Series EERI_RP_2008_19, Economics and Econometrics Research Institute (EERI), Brussels.
    3. Paula Simões & Luís Cruz & Eduardo Barata, 2012. "Non-market Recreational Value of a National Forest: Survey Design and Results," GEMF Working Papers 2012-09, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    4. Anders Van Sandt & Dawn Thilmany McFadden, 2022. "Navigating the corn maze: Customizing travel cost models to value market segments in heterogeneous industries," Tourism Economics, , vol. 28(4), pages 899-919, June.
    5. Richard Melstrom, 2014. "Valuing historic battlefields: an application of the travel cost method to three American Civil War battlefields," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 38(3), pages 223-236, August.
    6. Rolfe, John & Dyack, Brenda, 2010. "Testing for convergent validity between travel cost and contingent valuation estimates of recreation values in the Coorong, Australia," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 54(4), pages 1-17.
    7. Kuosmanen, Timo & Nillesen, Eleonora & Wesseler, Justus, 2004. "Does ignoring multidestination trips in the travel cost method cause a systematic bias?," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 48(4), pages 1-23.
    8. Becker, Nir, 2007. "Price discrimination as a policy tool for Nature Reserve Management," MPRA Paper 21867, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Doshi, Amar & Pascoe, Sean, 2013. "Investigating the effects of sample heterogeneity on the travel cost model for coral diving in Southeast Asia," 2013 Conference (57th), February 5-8, 2013, Sydney, Australia 152146, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    10. Pascoe, Sean, 2019. "Recreational beach use values with multiple activities," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 137-144.
    11. Simões, Paula & Barata, Eduardo & Cruz, Luís, 2013. "Joint estimation using revealed and stated preference data: An application using a national forest," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 249-266.
    12. Van Sandt, Anders & Thilmany, Dawn, 2016. "Exploring the Economics of Agritourists: Customizing Travel Cost Methods to Evaluate Differences Across the Western US," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 236142, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    13. Muhammad Rafiq & Shafiqullah, 2007. "Demand Analysis of Recreation Visits to Chitral Valley: A Natural Resource Management Perspective," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 971-984.
    14. Tisdell, Clement A. & Wilson, Clevo, 2003. "Economics of Wildlife Tourism," Economics, Ecology and Environment Working Papers 48969, University of Queensland, School of Economics.
    15. Bennett, Jeffrey W., 2005. "Australasian environmental economics: contributions, conflicts and ‘cop-outs’," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 49(3), pages 1-19.
    16. Himayatullah Khan, 2006. "Willingness to Pay for Margalla Hills National Park: Evidence from the Travel Cost Method," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 11(2), pages 43-70, Jul-Dec.
    17. Saúl Torres-Ortega & Rubén Pérez-Álvarez & Pedro Díaz-Simal & Julio Manuel De Luis-Ruiz & Felipe Piña-García, 2018. "Economic Valuation of Cultural Heritage: Application of Travel Cost Method to the National Museum and Research Center of Altamira," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-13, July.
    18. Maria Giovanna Brandano & Marta Meleddu, 2021. "Together or not? Spill-over effects of cultural goods displacement," Tourism Economics, , vol. 27(6), pages 1202-1220, September.
    19. 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.
    20. Nir Becker, 2009. "A Comparative Analysis of the Pricing Systems of Nature Reserves," Tourism Economics, , vol. 15(1), pages 193-213, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:19:p:8932-:d:1766939. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.