Willingness to pay versus willingness to travel: Assessing the recreational benefits from Dartmoor National Park

A variety of methods have been employed in the assessment of the recreational or user benefits derived from National Parks and other protected rural environments. In this paper we apply two of these-the contingent valuation method (CVM) and the contigent activity method (CAM) - to the Dartmoor National Park in England. The Park comprises about 1000 square kilometres of high moorland and is one of the most visited in the UK attracting over 10 million visitor days per annum. We also report, for the purposes of comparison, the results of a parallel Travel Cost Method (TCM) based study. The paper is organised as follows. In Section 2 we briefly review the methods used and outline the Dartmoor survey. In Section 3 we present the results and assess them in the context of each other and existing valuation studies. The potential benefits and costs of an elicitation question based on willingness to travel rather than willingness to pay are explored. Additional insight is gained by looking at the motivations of individuals in providing bids. Estimates of the aggregate recreational benefits generated by the Park are computed using the different valuation tools and found to be between about £20m and £250m per annum. (This range narrows down to £20m and £150m per annum if we leave out time costs in both the TCM and CAM procedures.) Section 4 concludes, identifying weaknesses in the analysis, highlighting policy implications and suggesting directions for future work.