IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/anu/wpieep/9705.html

The Travel Cost Method: an Empirical Investigation of Randall's Difficulty

Author

Listed:
  • Michael S. Common

    (University of Strathclyde)

  • Tim Bull

    (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics)

  • Natalie Stoeckl

    (University of Canberra)

Abstract

Randall (1994) argued that the Travel Cost Method, TCM, cannot do what it is supposed to do - generate monetary measures of recreation site benefits for use in Cost Benefit Analysis. Randall argues that what is relevant to recreational decision making is the subjective, and unobservable, price of travel, whereas what TCM uses is the observer assessed cost of travel. Hence, the best that can be expected from TCM is ordinally measurable welfare estimates. This paper formulates `Randall's difficulty' as an estimation problem and derives some results for that problem. A survey data set and Monte Carlo simulations based upon it, where many of the problems usually attending TCM application are absent, are used to illustrate and quantify Randall's difficulty. The meaning of, prospects for, and usefulness of ordinal measurement are explored, and the question of the existence of a solution to Randall's difficulty is considered.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael S. Common & Tim Bull & Natalie Stoeckl, 1997. "The Travel Cost Method: an Empirical Investigation of Randall's Difficulty," Working Papers in Ecological Economics 9705, Australian National University, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Ecological Economics Program.
    • Handle: RePEc:anu:wpieep:9705
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://een.anu.edu.au/download_files/eeo9705.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Paul Mwebaze & Jeff Bennett, 2012. "Valuing Australian botanic collections: a combined travel-cost and contingent valuation study," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 56(4), pages 498-520, October.
    4. 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.
    5. Jeff Bennett, 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 243-261, September.
    6. Chin-Huang Huang & Chiung-Hsia Wang, 2015. "Estimating the Total Economic Value of Cultivated Flower Land in Taiwan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-19, April.
    7. Natalie Stoeckl, 2003. "Measurement error and functional form: implications for welfare estimates," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(5), pages 259-270, April.
    8. Akbar Marvasti, 2010. "A welfare estimation of beach recreation with aggregate data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(3), pages 291-296.
    9. Bowker, James Michael & Starbuck, C. Meghan & English, Donald B.K. & Bergstrom, John C. & Rosenberger, Randall S. & McCollum, Daniel W., 2009. "Estimating the Net Economic Value of National Forest Recreation: An Application of the National Visitor Use Monitoring Database," Faculty Series 59603, University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    10. Ovaskainen, Ville & Neuvonen, Marjo & Pouta, Eija, 2012. "Modelling recreation demand with respondent-reported driving cost and stated cost of travel time: A Finnish case," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 303-317.
    11. Bowker, James Michael & Starbuck, C. Meghan & English, Donald B.K. & Bergstrom, John C. & Rosenberger, Randall S. & McCollum, Daniel W., 2009. "Estimating the Net Economic Value of National Forest Recreation: An Application of the National Visitor Use Monitoring Database," Faculty Series 59603, University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    12. van Rensburg, Tom M. & Mill, Greig A. & Common, Mick & Lovett, Jon, 2002. "Preferences and multiple use forest management," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2-3), pages 231-244, December.
    13. Chun-Chu Yeh & Cheng-Shen Lin & Chin-Huang Huang, 2018. "The Total Economic Value of Sport Tourism in Belt and Road Development—An Environmental Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:anu:wpieep:9705. 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: Jack Pezzey The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Jack Pezzey to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://incres.anu.edu.au/EEP/wp.html .

    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.