Much outdoor recreation occurs on publicly owned land and water
resources, or involves use of these public resources. Consequently, an
economic problem arises concerning the value of recreational resources
which do not have a conventional market price. Without a price to guide
the allocation of resources, it is difficult to obtain optimal decisions
in allocation of these publicly owned natural resources among alternative
uses, including recreation, timber, and domestic livestock production.
In Oregon, the big game resource has a great impact on the economy
of the state. Positive values of this resource are related to recreational
use and to income generated which benefit local economies. Negative
values of big game include its competition for resources used for
timber production and/or livestock grazing.
In order to better assess the value of the big game resource, an
attempt has been made in this thesis to improve demand models from which
the net economic value of the Oregon big game resource can be derived.
The data used in this study were obtained from the questionnaires mailed
to a random sample of Oregon big game hunters during the fall of 1968.
The travel cost method was used to estimate the demand for big game
hunting, based on the actual behavior of the hunters. Several algebraic
forms of the travel cost demand equation were estimated for the Northeast
and the Central regions of Oregon.
The concept of consumers' surplus was used to estimate the net economic
value for the Oregon big game resources. Net economic value for
the Northeast and Central regions of Oregon in 1968 dollars was approximately
$14.3 million, based on the exponential demand function. Net
economic value for the same two regions was approximately $11 million,
based on the linear demand function.
An attempt was made in this study to predict the changes in consumers'
surplus from changes in the number of deer and elk harvested.
Note that the regression models in this thesis implied that a ten percent
increase in harvest would increase the consumers' surplus of
hunters by more than ten percent. However, the hypothesis that a ten
percent increase in harvest would increase consumers' surplus by exactly
ten percent was not rejected by a statistical test. Therefore, a good
deal more research is needed to determine the value of marginal changes
in the number of deer and elk harvested.
It is thought that the estimation of net economic value in this
study for the Northeast and Central regions of Oregon will be useful
from the viewpoint of big game management and resource allocation in
Oregon. / Graduation date: 1981
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/26041 |
| Date | 22 April 1981 |
| Creators | Shalloof, Faisal M. |
| Contributors | Brown, William G. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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