United States

Department of

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

General Technical

Report

PNW-GTR-645

November 2005

Conceptualizing and

Measuring Demand for

Recreation on National

Forests: A Review and

Synthesis

Brian E. Garber-Yonts
The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the

principle of multiple use management of the Nation’s forest resources for sustained yields of wood water forage wildlife and recreation. Through forestry

research, cooperation with the States and private forest owners, and management of the national forests and national grasslands, it strive—as directed by

Congress—to provide increasingly greater service to a growing Nation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its

programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability,

and where applicable, sex, material status, familial status, parental status, religion,

sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or

part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not

all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require

alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print,

audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice

and TDD).

To file a complaint of discrimination write USDA, Director, Office o Civil Rights,

1400 Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, DC 20250-9410, or call (800) 795-

3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and

employer.

Author

Brian E. Garber-Yonts is a research economist, Forestry Sciences Laboratory,

3200 SW Jefferson Way, Corvallis, OR 97331.
Abstract

Garber-Yonts, Brian E. 2005. Conceptualizing and measuring demand for recreation on national forests: a review and synthesis. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNWGTR-645. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Pacific Northwest Research Station. 40 p.

This analysis examines the problem of measuring demand for recreation on national forests and other public lands. Current measures of recreation demand in

Forest Service resource assessments and planning emphasize population-level

participation rates and activity-based economic values for visitor days. Alternative

measures and definitions of recreation demand are presented, including formal

economic demand and multiattribute preferences. Recreation assessments from

national-level Renewable Resources Planning Act Assessments to site-level demand studies are reviewed to identify methods used for demand analysis at different spatial scales. A finding throughout the multiple scales of analysis, with the

exception of site-level studies, is that demand measures are not integrated with

supply measures. Supply analyses, in the context of resource assessments, have

taken the form of mapped spatial inventories of recreation resources on the national

forests, based on the classification of recreational settings according to the opportunities they produce (e.g., the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum). As such, integration of demand analysis with these measures of supply requires measuring the

demand for recreational settings. To support management and planning decisions,

recreation demand analysis must also permit projection of changes in visitation at

multiple scales as changes in management and policy alter recreational settings,

and as the demographics and behavior of the user base changes through time.

Although this is currently being done through many formal economic studies of

site demand, methods are needed that scale up to higher levels of spatial aggregation. Several areas for research, development and application of improved methods

for demand analysis are identified, and improved methods for spatially explicit

models of recreation visitation and demand are identified as a priority area for

research.

Keywords: Recreation, presentation, supply and demand, national forests.
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Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

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Introduction

Various trends among recreational users of public lands pose serious challenges to

recreation planning and management. These include increasing urbanization of the

population, an aging population base, greater racial diversity, and other changing

demographics of the user base; as well as the growing diversity of activities and

attendant changes in compatibility among user groups. After some 35 years of

Forest Service-sponsored research on recreation supply and demand, a variety of

tools, measures, and conceptual frameworks have been produced from various

social science and other perspectives. However, a unified framework for conceptualizing and measuring these two phenomena remains elusive. Indeed, the terms

recreation supply and demand themselves mean different things to different people,

including researchers, policymakers, site-level managers, and forest supervisors.

As the task of developing forest plans to guide management of the National Forest

System (NFS) over the next 15 years commences, a review of recreation demand

and supply concepts and their application to resource planning and assessment is

timely.

This paper focuses on measurement of recreation demand for resource policy,

planning, and management at multiple scales. The paper begins with a review of

the problem of integrating measures of recreation supply and demand, and the need

for an improved conceptual framework for demand that meshes with the existing

spatial measures of recreation supply. A review of different concepts of recreation

demand in the technical literature follows, with a brief primer on economic consumer theory as it applies to the spatial problem of recreation demand. The

“Needed Research” section of this paper reviews selected Forest Service and other

public agency recreation demand assessments and planning documents to identify

past attempts to quantify recreation demand, with a focus on what has been gained

from these efforts in terms of decision support for recreation resource management. This is followed by a brief review of the technical economic literature on

economic demand analysis of recreation and other amenity resources. A discussion

of priority areas for further research concludes this problem analysis.

The intent of this paper is to suggest potential research that will aid resource

managers and policymakers in understanding recreation demand and improve

its integration with recreation supply analyses. Although a review of previous

research that emphasizes technical research methods and findings comprises a

substantial part of the paper, it is hoped that this paper will be of interest to an

audience concerned with recreation demand from a broader perspective as well.

Readers approaching the paper from a planning and policy perspective may wish to

focus on sections “Spatially Integrating Recreation Supply and Demand Analysis”
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

2

and “Demand Concepts in Recreation.” These sections, respectively, address

recreation demand in a spatial context, and review definitions of demand that have

been applied to recreation resources with a focus on the economic definition of

demand for public land recreation. The “Review of Recreation Demand Assessments” section may be of interest to a variety of nonresearch oriented readers as

well, particularly those engaged in preparation of similar assessments. The review

of the recreation economics literature, although brief, addresses largely statistical

and modeling issues and is addressed mainly to researchers. The “Needed Research” section discusses issues that have been identified through the review of

literature and from other sources and are suggested as warranting research to

improve understanding the spatial aspects of recreation demand and integrated

analysis with supply and resource inventories. Along with the more focused

suggestion for one priority area for research, it is hoped that both researchers

and management-oriented readers will find these suggestions useful for framing research intended to provide decision support for recreation planning and

management.

The Problem: Spatially Integrating Recreation Supply

and Demand Analysis

There is an extensive literature on supply of and demand for recreation. Theoretical

contributions such as the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS) (Clark and

Stankey 1979, Driver and Brown 1978), Benefits-Based Management (Driver

1996), and Limits of Acceptable Change (Stankey 1984) have provided essential

conceptual tools for understanding the nature of recreation supply. A large amount

of literature on recreation demand models has advanced formal methods for

estimating recreation demand at the site level (Rosenberger and Loomis 2001), and

a number of applied national and regional assessments detailing population-level

trends in recreation behavior and inventories of recreation resources has been

produced to support NFS recreation programs (Cordell and Overdevest 2001,

English et al. 1999, Gartner and Lime 2000). Standards for analysis of recreation

supply are relatively well-developed (USDA Forest Service 1986, 1995, 2003a),

and most NFS units have spatially explicit (i.e., mapped) inventories completed or

underway (an example, the Southern Appalachian Assessment [SAA] analysis of

recreation resources is reviewed in the “Review of Recreation Demand Assessments” section below). However, no framework for measuring recreation demand

that integrates with measures of supply has been extensively applied for purposes

of Forest Service decision support. To render demand analysis more useful for

planning and management decisionmaking at a variety of scales, a more complete
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

3

and integrated conceptual framework is needed for understanding recreation

supply and demand in a spatial context and at multiple scales.

At the core of most recreation inventories is a classification system used to

identify the location and quantity of recreation lands. The ROS is the most commonly used classification system.1

 It classifies recreation landscapes along a

continuum ranging from primitive lands characterized by minimal human intervention to rural and urban recreation landscapes where virtually all elements of the

landscape are managed. Although the general criteria that describe elements of the

recreation setting and that are used to classify the landscape have changed somewhat in different applications, they have typically included naturalness, managerial

regimentation, remoteness, social encounters, access, and size, each with one or

more qualitative or quantitative indices (see USDA Forest Service 1986 for a more

detailed description). The technical guide developed to assist recreation planners in

completing the 2005 forest plan revisions (USDA Forest Service 2003a) identifies

ROS as the principal tool for supply analysis of NFS recreation resources, and

provides protocols for geographic information system (GIS) analysis and mapping

of national forest landscapes according to ROS criteria. Thus, most contemporary

analyses of recreation supply are in terms of recreation opportunities, described by

mapped cultural, social, and geophysical attributes of recreation settings.

In the context of larger scale assessments, particularly the 1974 Resource

Planning Act (RPA) decennial assessments,2

 recreation demand analysis has

focused on quantifying two elements of recreation demand (Rosenberger and

Loomis 2001). The first, consistent with assessment of supply and demand of

renewable resources required by RPA, is participation in a variety of activities

among broad populations. The second element, required as part of the RPA

assessment of the costs and benefits of resource programs, is estimation of mean

1

 Although the ROS was not initially conceived (Clark and Stankey 1979, Driver and

Brown 1978) as a framework for recreation inventories, it is recognized that demand for

recreational experiences in various settings can be best met by providing a diversity of

settings.

2

 The Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974 requires the

Secretary of Agriculture to conduct an assessment of the Nation’s renewable resources

every 10 years. The original act had four requirements for the assessment:

“(1) an analysis of present and anticipated uses, demand for, and supply of the renewable

resources, with consideration of the international resource situation, and an emphasis of

pertinent supply and demand and price relationship trends; (2) an inventory,...of present and

potential renewable resources, and an evaluation of opportunities for improving their yield

of tangible and intangible services,... (3) a description of Forest Service programs and

responsibilities...; and (4) a discussion of important policy considerations, laws, regulations,

and other factors expected to influence and affect significantly the use, ownership, and

management of forest, range, and other associated lands.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

4

willingness to pay (WTP) values by recreational activity type in terms commensurate with commodity prices. Participation rates and WTP values provide planners

and policymakers with a broad picture of the types of recreation preferred by the

general public and relative value of “activity days.” However, neither provides

needed information on what resources and places visitors actually use, or might

use under alternative policy or management scenarios. That is, neither provides

the basis for measuring demand in the same dimensions that are used to measure

recreation supply: cultural, social, and geophysical attributes of recreation settings

in particular places.

Perhaps the place to begin in developing a better approach to assessing demand

for recreation might be agreement on a consistent definition of the term demand.

Both the terms demand and supply are commonly appropriated from the field of

economics, often inaccurately. One source of ambiguity in the context of recreation studies is the tendency to use demand as shorthand for different aspects of

recreation behavior and preference without adequate understanding of the conceptual economic underpinnings of the term. That is, demand is commonly thought

to describe, loosely, “what people (consumers, visitors) want.” The most critical

point with regard to the formal economic definition of demand, however, is that it

reflects tradeoffs that consumers make between available goods and services when

allocating scarce resources of time and money. Thus, measuring recreation demand

requires us to address the tradeoffs that consumers make between different leisure

experiences, alternative goods and services available, time, and money. Although

ability to observe those decisions empirically and measure their outcomes is

clearly imperfect, recreation planning would be greatly enhanced by systematically

applying the tools available to study recreation demand in its many dimensions

rather than restricting analysis to the number of participants in a given activity and

the average value of a visitor day.3

 Those dimensions include tradeoffs between

3

 Studies undertaken to estimate WTP use formal economic demand analysis and incorporate, to some degree, attributes of recreation site settings in statistical models of demand.

However, recreation demand has been measured in situ only on an ad hoc basis, with

relatively small-scale visitor surveys being implemented widely for specific sites or forest

units. Although there exists an extensive array of site-specific recreation demand studies

(Rosenberger and Loomis 2001), there has been no systematic assessment of the spatial and

temporal dimensions of recreation demand at relevant scales. Economic demand studies are

typically focused on the tradeoff between cost of access to a site and the number of visits to

the site. Rosenberger and Loomis (2001) have integrated formal economic demand studies

for public land recreation through meta-analyses of 131 separate primary studies. The purpose of that analysis is to develop protocols for “benefits transfer,” i.e., application of estimates of recreation use values from primary research sites to other sites for policy analysis

purposes. Although many of the studies incorporated into the meta-analysis incorporate and

control for some quality variables describing the recreational settings where visitor data

were collected, the analysis is not focused on integration of demand estimates with supply

inventories. The Rosenberger and Loomis (2001) study is discussed in greater detail in

“Needed Research” section.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

5

location, cost, and a host of other setting attributes and quality variables (which

will be discussed in greater detail in Section IV) that determine consumers’ recreational choices.

It has long been recognized that the recreation good that public land provides,

and that visitors consume, is the opportunity to engage in a preferred activity at a

time and place that provides the settings required to gain a desired experience

(Committee on Assessment of Demand for Outdoor Recreation Resources 1975).

These settings are a result of physical, social, and managerial characteristics or

attributes. Many of these attributes are the same as those used in forest planning

to inventory recreation supply in terms of ROS settings. Thus, understanding

demand in terms of these and other variables provides the basis for integrating the

monitoring and analysis of supply and demand. Moreover, understanding recreation demand in the same terms used to characterize recreation supply would allow

planners and analysts to anticipate the response of recreation demand (i.e., visitors)

to changes in recreation supply. Participation rates and average recreation use

values by themselves do not permit analytical approaches to anticipating the level

or spatial distribution of recreation demand and visitation.

With the increased emphasis on geographic and temporal scale and spatial

context in planning and managing public land resources, the spatial and temporal

dimensions of recreation demand, in particular, require better conceptual understanding and tools for measurement. The NFS has long embraced a mission of

providing multiple benefits and uses to society (USDA Forest Service 2000).

However, increasing attention is being focused on the spatial distribution of those

benefits and uses. This attention stems from recognition that attempting to provide

for all uses everywhere is inefficient and potentially degrades the value of the

resource base. This is true across the range of commodity and amenity resources

produced on the national forests; however, it is particularly true in the case of

recreation. Past efforts to be too broadly accommodative have in many cases

produced homogenized and degraded recreation experience opportunities and

resources (McCool and Cole 2001). Thus, a greater understanding of the role

of scale and spatial context in recreation planning and management is needed,

including the ability to integrate recreation planning across different spatial scales,

from site-level management and planning, to forest-, subregional-, regional- and

national-level planning and policymaking.

At any given scale of management, understanding the spatial distribution of

recreation demand and supply at the next finer and coarser scales would provide

planners with the needed context for efficiently allocating resources. This could

improve individual forest units’ ability to provide recreation benefits to the public,
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

6

including underserved groups, and identify recreation opportunities that are

undersupplied relative to demand within the context of the larger service area.

Greater recognition and systematic analysis of the role of place and the spatial

distribution of demand in regional planning and assessment is needed to improve

the ability of administrative units to integrate planning efforts, particularly between

subregional or forest and finer scales within a regional context.

Assessments of recreation supply have, to a large extent, focused on resource

inventories and the opportunities available at specific sites. Increasingly, these

inventories are spatially detailed and use extensive geographic mapping resources

and technologies. Improved integration of supply and demand assessment will

require that demand analysis use spatial tools to a similar extent. This does not

require extensive development of new theoretical or analytical tools, or even data,

but it will require that existing tools and data be used to answer pressing questions.

The principal recreation use monitoring programs administered by the Forest

Service are the National Visitor Use Monitoring (NVUM) project (English et al.

2002) and the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment (NSRE)

(Cordell et al. 1997). Neither of these surveys has been designed to integrate with

ROS-based supply inventories. However, both provide broad-based, spatially

referenced data on indicators of recreation preferences and behavior. Integrated

analysis of these data with additional spatially referenced sources could potentially

produce spatial measures of recreation demand, and results from testing this

hypothesis would aid in development of improved monitoring efforts. Monitoring

efforts could be redesigned or enhanced to improve or facilitate better integration,

but this would require a more spatially articulated conceptual framework for

recreation demand analysis. Developing and making this framework accessible to

recreation planners, managers, and policymakers is, perhaps, one of the principal

challenges to Forest Service recreation demand analysis.

Demand Concepts in Recreation

The concept of demand has a somewhat ambiguous meaning in social science

and in planning and management of recreation. Rates of visitation to recreation

sites, rates of participation in various recreation activities, economic values,

political pressure from providers and users of resources, and public opinion and

preferences expressed through public involvement and in terms of sense of place,

are variously referred to in shorthand as demand. Although each of these measures

and information sources contribute to an understanding of recreation demand, each

presents an incomplete picture of demand if considered in isolation. That is, no

single measurement of demand can address the full range of issues confronting
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

7

recreation resource use and policy. However, a more integrated method of measuring demand at the scale of concern to national forest planners and managers would

help them anticipate the response of potential users to management changes and

assist in better coordination between forests at regional levels.

The difficulties with the term demand in the context of recreation have long

been recognized. In 1975, the National Research Council, Committee on Assessment of Demand for Outdoor Recreation Resources noted:

 The notion of “demand” is generally well understood from the

tradition of the discipline of economics: recreation demand is the

conditional statement of the participation that would result in a

given time and in a given place under a specific set of conditions

and assumptions about an individual and his or her social relationships and the availability of recreation resources (the traditional

“price” of recreation). Individuals together express an aggregate

demand, which is aggregate participation, conditional on measures

of three sets of factors relevant to an individual (individual characteristics; social relationships and societal constraints and influences;

and the available opportunities for recreation)...This economic

model of demand is not broad enough, however, to encompass all

the factors that are important to recreation decisions. Information

about the wishes, needs, and desires of potential and active recreationists does and should enter into decisions in forms other than

through the economic concept of demand, and the Committee has

chosen to use this broader definition of demand in this report...

(Committee on Assessment of Demand for Outdoor Recreation

Resources 1975:11).

The authors of the report are concerned with a broad range of recreation decisions, from those of the individual recreationists and site-level managers to

broader societal decisions regarding the role of recreation in American life and

the role of government in providing access to recreation opportunities. They

acknowledge that a formal model of demand is inadequate to address the full range

of issues under their consideration. Indeed, the authors rejected the notion that

recreation planning must be comprehensive and continuous from national plans

and policy through to local site-based decisions, and argue that a single model of

demand does not fit all levels of this hierarchy. However, the economic model that

they did site is overly narrow in that it treats factors of demand other than price as

static.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

8

Some of the principal concerns raised in the committee’s 1975 report are the

overreliance of large-scale assessments on public participation in local resource

allocation decisions and the failure to address the desires of latent or underserved

users. To restate the formal definition of demand that they offer, demand is a

conditional statement of use at a particular time and place as conditions of supply

vary. Price is commonly the principal variable of interest in economic studies, and

other conditions, such as other attributes of the recreation resource and demographics of the user base, are assumed to be held constant. However, these other conditions, particularly in the case of recreation, are often of greater concern than price.

In fact, management-driven change in price of access to public recreation land is a

relatively rare occurrence, whereas road closures or bathroom construction are

routine decisions made by resource managers, typically with very little information

on the impact these decisions will have on visitation. In recent years, economic

studies of nonmarket resource values have concentrated on the implications of

nonprice attributes of resource decisions on both economic benefits and consumption. Recreation studies from other disciplines have employed similar models to

evaluate visitor tradeoffs of site attributes with a greater focus on visitor experience than in public welfare evaluation (Lawson and Manning 2002). A brief review

of the technical development of methods for analysis of quality changes in

nonmarket goods is provided below.

As the Committee on Assessment of Demand for Outdoor Recreation Resources pointed out, public land managers supply, and visitors demand, opportunities to engage in recreational activities and gain recreational experiences. Driver

and Brown (1978) developed a definition of what, precisely, is the nature of the

recreational good that is transferred from the provider to the user, resulting in a

recreation opportunity demand hierarchy. Driver and Brown (1978) suggested

that recreationists’ demand for opportunities could be broken down into four

tiered components. The most tangible component, most easily recognized by users,

is activities (e.g., wilderness camping, whitewater canoeing, or family picnics).

The second tier of demands, which are somewhat less tangible and somewhat less

easily defined by users, is for opportunities to experience situational attributes of

the physical, social, and managerial settings. The third tier is described as demand

for opportunities to realize specific psychological outcomes produced from activities engaged in within preferred environmental settings. The fourth tier of recreation demand is for opportunities to realize benefits that flow from satisfying

experiences.

As noted above, the first tier of demand identified by Driver and Brown (1978)

has been the focus of recreation demand assessment. The second tier, which was
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

9

one of the principal insights that gave rise to the development of the ROS, is noted

by the authors as the more relevant element of demand for public land recreation,

because, except in certain circumstances, public land agencies do not produce

activities, but provide the settings for them. Indeed, activities could be viewed

as an output produced by households combining privately owned recreation

resources (skills, equipment) with publicly owned recreational settings (Cordell

1990). Despite this, settings have not been the focus of most recreation demand

analyses. However, because of the success of the ROS as a conceptual framework

for understanding recreation resources, settings have been the unit of analysis for

most supply analyses.

In contrast to the formal definition of demand used by economists, recreation

demand assessments conducted by the Forest Service, until recently, and other land

management agencies typically use household survey data to estimate the proportion of the regional population that participates in a given activity (where the list of

activities tracked by national- and state-level recreation surveys is long and growing; e.g., sailing, motorboating, jet skiing, rafting, tubing, kayaking, canoeing,

surfing, sailboarding), and the number of recreational trips generated by the population on an annual or seasonal basis. With demographic information collected

from survey respondents, trends in participation rates among population segments

are tracked. In some cases these trends are modeled by using contemporaneous

trends in demographic characteristics of the population to facilitate projections

of changes in participation rates on the basis of regional demographic projections

(discussed in greater detail below). This provides some measure of responsiveness

of recreation demand to changes in other dynamic factors. The complexity of

estimating participation rates and the value of projected changes in participation

should not be understated. However, measures of participation and populationlevel trends do not provide users of this information with any insight into the

effects of changes in recreation supply (particularly in the attributes of recreation

opportunities such as site quality) on demand, whether defined simply as participation, or in terms of the number of trips generated or visitation to particular recreation places that users desire. An approach focused on participation alone overlooks

the fundamental relationship between supply and demand and the multidimensionality of both phenomena, thus providing no insight into the effects of changes in

the very factors over which planners and managers have a degree of control.

Similarly, at the finer spatial scales at which resource planning takes place, i.e.,

forest or subregional clusters of forests, demand analysis has tended to focus on

visitor counts, occasionally supplemented with site-level formal economic demand
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

10

analyses. Only recently, with the implementation of the NVUM survey (English et

al. 2002) have consistent and scientifically valid 4

 visitor counts become broadly

available for forest and regional planning. Although visitor counts provide a

greater level of spatial detail than participation rates, by themselves they remain a

single-dimension measure of demand that provides only a snapshot of current use.

Although the information on participation and visitation available to both regional

assessments and forest planning provide a much improved picture of current

conditions than that available in previous analyses, this information nonetheless

provides little guidance to planners regarding how use might change under policy

or planning alternatives. What is fundamental in this case about formal demand

analysis is that it provides some projection of how recreational behavior is likely

to change under conditions over which managers have some control and thus

provides a far greater basis for decision support.

Recreation supply

The issue of supply in recreation is no less complex than the issue of demand. The

conception of supply has largely focused on classification systems for inventory of

recreational resources (e.g., ROS, Scenery Management System). In particular,

because recreational experiences are ultimately the “products” that are consumed

by visitors and users, the capacity to support those desired experiences is typically

regarded as the physically measurable quantity most relevant to recreation supply.

An extensive array of tools has been developed by Forest Service research and

other investigators and used for supply assessment and inventory purposes. Supply

analysis, however, must go beyond inventory of existing resources, itself a daunting task in the context of the hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, to

address both the ecological and social capacity of public lands to support desired

recreational experiences. This is a complex area of research and analysis and goes

beyond the scope of this paper. See Haas (2002) for further discussion of efforts to

assess capacity limits of public lands.

Review of Recreation Demand Assessments

One objective of this paper is to review past work done in support of recreation

demand assessments, both for the NFS as well as for other agencies involved in

large-scale recreation management programs. The purpose for this review is to

4

 Note that the NVUM survey was implemented for the first time in 2000 through 2004

and the success of the data collection protocols are currently being evaluated. Statistical

properties of the data are known insofar as collection protocols are complied with by

individual forest units.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

11

identify the methods that have been used and how effective those methods have

been in providing useful measures of recreation demand for planning and management purposes. The review is organized by the scope of analysis, starting from

national-scale assessments to site-level studies.

The USDA Forest Service, as well as state and other federal agencies, routinely

undertakes resource assessments for the purpose of planning and management.

The 1974 RPA is the guiding legislation that specifies the goals of Forest Service

resource assessments, to include “an analysis of present and anticipated uses,

demand for, and supply of renewable resources, with consideration of the international resource situation, and an emphasis on pertinent supply, demand, and price

relationship trends” (sec. 3(a)(1)). The RPA explicitly requires that recreation be

placed on par with other renewable resources and that assessment of current condition and trends in recreational resources be included in national RPA analyses.

Under the 1965 Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, similar assessment of

demand and supply conditions are required of state governments as a condition

of eligibility for federal recreation development funds. Preparation of statewide

comprehensive outdoor recreation plans has been conducted by all 50 states, and

the Oregon and Washington state plans are reviewed below.

RPA Assessment of Outdoor Recreation

Bergstrom et al. (1994) reviewed the first three RPA recreation assessments conducted by the Forest Service, 1975, 1980, and 1989, and presented results of a

survey of RPA users conducted following the latter assessment. Through the 1989

assessment, both demand and supply data improved considerably as surveys were

improved for purposes of complying with RPA and developing the methods to

achieve its objectives. Primary data sources for the 1989 assessment demand

component were the Public Area Recreation Visitors Study and U.S. Bureau of

the Census data. In each of these early assessments, the objective was to estimate

community-level demand functions. The 1989 assessment model estimated the

quantity of trips for a given activity generated in aggregate at the regional level

(Cordell 1990) as a function of regional demographics, cost per trip, average suitability of sites available to the community for that activity, and availability of

substitute recreational activities.5

 Projections of recreation demand to 2040 were

made based on U.S. census projections of demographic change and were used to

5

 Earlier assessments modeled trips demanded at the level of the individual survey respondent rather than in aggregate. The different specification of the dependent variable in

successive models renders analysis of long-term trends somewhat problematic.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

12

analyze alternative scenarios under which demand and supply equilibrium would

be met in what was referred to as a “gap analysis.” In a constrained recreation

scenario, it was assumed that supply would remain constant and price per trip

would increase over time as the demand curve shifted out. The price differential,

i.e., gap, between the current level and the increase as demand shifted out was

used to provide a measure of the need for increased supply to maintain current or

“unconstrained” access levels. Analysis of demand and supply trends and equilibria were formal and quantitative, although at a high level of spatial aggregation.

At this level of aggregation, the gap analysis did not provide any analytical guidance other than to illustrate conceptually that failure to expand supply (i.e., shift

the supply curve outward) would result in an increase in equilibrium price per trip.

The utility of the gap analysis also appeared to be limited by ambiguity in the

discussion of supply. Two measures of supply were discussed in the assessment

document, including both an aggregate inventory of settings and visitor capacity

as well as a model of household supply of recreation trips based on a household

production function approach. The latter was presented, but little inference was

drawn from the analysis and it was not integrated with the demand analysis.

In a survey of RPA assessment users from 1992 through 1993, Bergstrom et al.

(1994) identified several areas for further development in future recreation demand

and supply analysis sections of RPA assessments. These included regional supply

and demand trends, effects of qualitative changes in settings on demand and supply

trends, improved connection between units of measure of supply and demand,

effects of demographic and socioeconomic changes, and net economic value and

regional economic impact of recreation. The conjecture of the authors was that

some of these, in particular the effect of quality changes, would not be included in

future RPA assessments without substantial allocation of resources to the study of

these effects. The authors do not identify methods of analysis that would achieve

these objectives. However, the suggestions for further research support the thesis

of this report that spatially explicit analysis of demand is required to provide

the needed decision support for planning and management of forest recreation

resources.

As documented in the most recent RPA recreation assessment, Cordell and

McKinney (1999) analyzed long-term trends in U.S. outdoor recreation based on

data provided by the NSRE, the first population-based recreation survey designed

specifically to address RPA requirements. Some notable findings of the study

include the following: bicycling participation is up from 12 million in 1960 to 63

million in 1995, which the authors attribute to technological change; and camping

has increased 350 percent since 1960. Up through the early part of the period,
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

13

technological change was minimal, and most campers were young families. In

more recent surveys, recreational vehicle (RV) camping by retirees accounts for a

large part of the growth, and camping by more diverse users as a secondary activity

to gain access to other recreation resources is increasingly common. Primitive

camping is the fastest growing component, increasing 72 percent over the 35-year

period compared to 42 percent for developed camping. This is largely attributed

to improved equipment, making campers more self-contained. The authors do

not address the question of compatibility of types of campers, i.e., whether those

choosing primitive camping have been displaced by the increased use of developed

facilities by RVs. Horseback riding and hunting both declined in absolute terms,

attributed to declining access to undeveloped land and increasingly urbanized populations. Shorter term trends are similar: from 1983 to 1995, numbers of people

participating in outdoor recreation increased for most activities measured. Birdwatching increased the most (155 percent), followed by hiking (94 percent), backpacking (73 percent), primitive area camping (58 percent), off-highway vehicle

(OHV) driving (44 percent), walking (43 percent), sightseeing (40 percent),

developed area camping (38 percent), and other land-based activities. Downhill

skiing and snowmobiling also increased substantially (59 percent and 34 percent,

respectively).

In a further analysis of activity participation rates using the NSRE crosssectional data, Bowker et al. (1999) projected participation to 2050 for the North,

South, Rocky Mountain, and Pacific regions of the United States (results were not

presented for the nine regional administrative units of the Forest Service). Combining U.S. census projections of demographic change (Torgerson 1996) with estimates of regional supply of recreation resources, (e.g., acres of federal wilderness,

acres of nonfederal forested land, number of developed camping sites within 200

miles of a given population center), the authors developed two sets of models: (1)

logistic models using individual observations from NSRE to estimate individual

participation by activity and (2) count data (negative binomial) models using

aggregate counts of participants using the same explanatory variables (estimation

results not published; available from the authors). Broad regional findings of the

study indicate that the Pacific region will exhibit the highest increase in participation rates among individuals, as well as the largest number of activities with

expected increases among those analyzed. Although the analysis of demand in

terms of recreation participation for the 1999 assessment used the same methods as

the 1989 assessment, the formal analysis of equilibrium conditions in supply and

demand was not carried out to the same degree. The 1999 analysis relied more on

qualitative analysis and expert opinion (Cordell and McKinney 1999: 31-32) with
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

14

the suggestion that the complexity and assumptions made in the gap analysis used

in the 1989 RPA rendered communication of the findings too difficult.

The 1999 RPA recreation assessment responded to the recommendations of

Bergstrom et al. (1994) by producing greater regional detail in demand analysis,

including some results presented at the county level. As anticipated by Bergstrom

et al., however, many of the recommendations were not addressed, including

greater focus on the effect of changes in site characteristics and greater connection

between units of measure of supply and demand. An extensive review of available

outdoor recreation resources was conducted (Betz et al. 1999), along with a specific focus on private land provision of recreation resources. The status and trends

in resource inventories across regions, by agency and ownership, were addressed in

terms of acres, miles, and numbers of developed sites for various types of land and

other resources. Apart from qualitative characterizations of resource availability,

supply trends were measured in terms of national-, regional-, and county-level per

capita inventories of land and water resources, again in terms of acres, miles, and

numbers of facilities rather than in terms of visitor capacity. Integration of these

measures with the demand assessment was largely limited to a qualitative interpretation of the results (English et al. 1999), namely that resources for which demand

was likely to outstrip supply over the time horizon of the assessment (2000-2050)

were those associated with activities growing at rates greater than population

growth. The effects of changes in resource supply, either in terms of quantity or

site characteristics, on demand do not appear to have been addressed in any detail.

Thus, as the 1999 assessment was not characterized by a substantial reallocation of

research resources, the greater integration and detail suggested by assessment users

in the Bergstrom et al. (1994) survey were not incorporated. As discussed below,

improved availability of visitation data, at least with regard to NFS lands, may

permit some advance on these objectives for the next RPA assessment.

Regional Resource Assessments and Planning

Analyses

Southern Appalachian Assessment

Several regional and subregional recreation supply and demand studies have been

conducted over the last decade. These studies were conducted to support regional

and forest-level planning and thus provided a less aggregated level of analysis and

focused more on regional planning issues than did the RPA. Despite this, formal

analyses of recreation demand and supply consisted largely of more detailed presentation of regional RPA results rather than conducting more localized studies or
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

15

surveys, although the Southern Appalachian Assessment (SAA), in particular

(Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere Cooperative 1996), included

considerable spatial detail in the inventory of recreation resources.

The SAA study was completed in 1996 and comprises a detailed analysis of

the status and trends in resource conditions in the Southern Appalachian ecosystem. The area covered by the analysis extends over 37 million acres and includes

parts of seven states extending from Virginia southwest to Alabama. Chapter 4 of

the “Social, Cultural, and Economic” volume of the report addresses the demand

and supply of outdoor recreation in the area. The supply analysis section of the

report developed the most detailed typological approach to describing recreation

resources on a large spatial scale yet used in regional assessments.6

 The ROS

(Clark and Stankey 1979, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service 1986)

classification of recreational landscapes provided a base for the mapping classifications, and was enriched with further landscape characteristics defined in the

Scenery Management System used by Forest Service landscape architects (USDA

Forest Service 1995).

Demand analysis in the SAA was largely limited to regional results of the

NSRE and earlier iterations of national recreation surveys. The form of these

results, namely participation rates by activity across the population base of

the region and the number of trips generated by the population, as well as projected trends in these figures, is described in the previous section. Statewide

Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) documents for six states were

reviewed and findings extracted; results were similar to those found in Oregon and

Washington, including aging populations, increase in passive-use activities, and

shorter trips. To supplement the participation figures, the authors reviewed some

75 visitor surveys that had been conducted in the study area beginning in 1980.

These addressed visitor motivations, attitudes, and satisfaction levels.

Using limited data and published results from previous studies, the SAA

assessed the net economic value (NEV) of 14 activities, which ranged from $5.79

per day for day hiking to $126 per day for river rafting. The SAA authors noted

6

 This review focuses on demand analysis; the supply and capacity elements of regional

assessments have not been extensively reviewed here. The SAA, however, developed a

particularly detailed classification system with documented protocols for spatial analysis

of settings (Riitters 1995), ultimately developing detailed spatially referenced inventories

of recreational resources. This system is particularly notable in that it provides a basis for

analysis of demand by providing a framework of physical and cultural attributes of recreational sites and landscapes in dimensions that can be quantitatively defined. These

quantitative measures of settings can thus provide the basis for analysis of demand for

recreational settings in terms that permit commensurate comparisons of physical units of

demand and supply.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

16

that the calculation of NEV estimates is of limited quality and recommend two

improvements for further research. Controlling for the characteristics of settings

would improve value estimates; because site qualities are subject to change as

a matter of management, understanding the value of site improvement would

increase the ability of managers to efficiently allocate resources to maintain

and improve recreation sites. Second, the authors called for improved estimates

of visitation.

As noted above, the SAA provides the most detailed assessment of recreation resources performed at the regional scale. This inventory of settings and

facilities is the most spatially referenced supply analysis to date, and arguably

represents a best practice standard for regional assessments. Nonetheless, the

analysis of demand fails to address the distribution of visitation across the welldescribed recreational landscape. Although there is an effort to associate activities with the types of settings to which they are suited, there is a gap between the

descriptions of supply and demand in that they are not described in commensurate

terms. The authors suggest that future work on controlling for settings in estimating demand curves for recreation activities would come closer to describing supply

and demand in the same quantities. Before estimating economic values for changes

in site qualities, however, the response of visitation itself must be understood. For

planning and management purposes, visitation response is likely to be more

directly useable information that WTP estimates.

Columbia River Basin

Haynes and Horne (1997) provided a brief overview of recreation supply and

demand in the interior Columbia basin region of the Pacific Northwest. The

authors reported activity-based annual average counts of visitor days, spatially

referenced to 13 ecological reporting units that defined the spatial framework of

the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP) (2000),

of which their study was a component. As a supplemental document to ICBEMP,

English and Horne (1996) developed a model of recreation demand for spatial

settings. Generally, the authors’ objective was to be able to predict the change

in value of recreation for the Columbia River basin as ecosystem management is

implemented for the basin, where anticipated changes are mainly produced by

road closures. In an extension of Rosenthal (1987), the authors modified the

general approach of multiple-site travel cost models by dividing the model of site

visitation into a two-equation system, with trip generation and trip distribution as
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

17

independent variables.7 The trip generation analysis uses Cordell and Bergstrom’s

(1989) model of regional recreation demand to measure trip generation from a

given origin (county), for 12 activity groupings. Trips from a given county are

modeled as a function of recreation resources available regionally. Recreation

resources are described in terms of three ROS class groupings (primitive/

semiprimitive [PSP], roaded-natural [RN], and rural/urban [RU]) and acres

of land within the county in five ecoregion classes (Bailey et al. 1994). The ROS

acres are indexed to county by using a distance-weighting scheme in which the

“pull” of recreation land decays with distance from the county. The trip distribution model analyzes the number of visits per year to a given site for each activity

group as a function of variables describing the site including ownership, ROS

class, and ecoregion, acres of the site, and the distance-weighted sum of activity

trips generated from counties in the market area of the site. Using the model

results, English and Horne (1996) found that they were able to predict observed

visitation levels fairly closely, with boating and OHV use slightly overestimated

and hunting and fishing underestimated. Using the Deschutes and Malheur

National Forests as empirical examples, English and Horne (1996) modeled three

resource scenarios by using population demographic projections for 2005. With

the no-change scenario, motor viewing was predicted to increase from 1993 to

2005 by over a third for both forests, as well as 20 to 30 percent increases in trail

use, camping, wildlife viewing, day use, fishing, and winter sports. Two alternative

scenarios were modeled, one closing roads (thus shifting RN acres to PSP acres),

and one in which roads would be built in current roadless areas, decreasing the

amount of PSP land. Large increases in trail use were predicted for the roadclosure scenario, with more modest decreases in nonmotor boating. Trail use

declines under the road-building scenario, particularly in the Malheur, with both

forests seeing over 40 percent increases in scenic driving.

Improvements and extensions suggested by English and Horne (1996) center

mainly on improving the detail and resolution of visitation data and resource

descriptions, including fish and game populations, scenic condition, biological

diversity, and others. Greater availability of spatial data as well as richer information on visitation collected through the NVUM (English et al. 2002) survey should

7

 It is not clear what the benefit of this approach has over single equation systems in that

English and Horne (1996) do not address problems of endogeneity, nor does it appear that

they estimated the equations simultaneously; rather, trip generation by county is estimated

and then included as exogenous in the trip distribution model.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

18

permit significant advances over this analysis. English and Horne (1996) noted

that the access description used in the data was too coarse and should include road

condition (noting that this should be incorporated into ROS classifications but was

not for this analysis). The authors also suggested greater integration of recreation

models with other resource models, e.g., reflecting the effect of road density on

fish and wildlife population levels. Nonetheless, the study represents the first

attempt to apply a spatial model of visitation on a regional scale, assessing effects

of changes in site attributes on a large scale.

Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation

Planning

Oregon and Washington

Both Oregon and Washington have recently completed semidecadal recreation

plans (Oregon Parks and Recreation Department 2003, Washington Interagency

Committee for Outdoor Recreation 2002) as required for eligibility under the

federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. Both documents provide detailed

analyses of the current status and trends in recreation supply and demand on a

statewide basis and represent state-level assessments very similar to those conducted nationally under the RPA. Similar information is available for other states

participating in the Land and Water Conservation Fund, providing useful supplements to the work of Cordell and others (Bowker et al. 1999, Cordell 1990, 1999,

Cordell and McKinney 1999, Cordell and Super 2000, Cordell et al. 1997, English

et al. 1999), in addition to providing detailed inventories of outdoor recreation

facilities and resources.

The Oregon SCORP describes results of a survey of recreation participation,

in which 4,400 residents of Oregon in 11 regions of the state, and 800 residents

of non-Oregon counties adjacent to Oregon’s borders, were contacted by phone

and with a followup mail survey. Similar to the NSRE analyses, the SCORP survey

measures proportion of the population engaging in a broad range of activities,

some 77 in all, as well as the intensity of participation as measured by number of

annual activity days. These data are more spatially disaggregated than those

gathered by NSRE and are more closely calibrated to the range of activities common in Oregon. The Washington SCORP analysis included a survey of 1,500

residents of the state, using a diary-based form to record recreation participation

over a calendar year. As this format incorporated more open-ended participation

questions, 170 distinct activities were identified and measured. The survey sample

was not stratified by region, however, so participation estimates are not statistically

valid for subregions of the state.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

19

Although the survey method and sampling design are different for the two state

SCORP analyses and the NSRE, broad results and conclusions are largely the

same. The most common activities were those that participants engaged in close to

home, e.g., bicycling, walking, sightseeing, often in urban settings or in natural

areas adjacent to urban areas. Much of the most significant growth occurred in

wildland-related activities, including nature and wildlife observation, RV trailer

camping, and sightseeing, with picnicking, horseback riding, and car and tent

camping exhibiting some of the sharpest declines. Notable demographic changes

with implications for public land recreation managers included rapid population

growth, increasing ethnic diversity in the population, and a growing gap at the

center of the income distribution. The Oregon SCORP echoes the findings of

Dwyer (1994) that the implications of these demographic changes include:

• Decrease in participation in most activities seems to occur as the individual

reaches middle age. Participation in physically strenuous activities starts to

decline at early ages, with participation in other activities beginning to decline

later in life. Exceptions are walking and observing nature, which are enjoyed

by people of all ages.

• Significant differences in recreation participation occur between different

racial and ethnic groups. For example, Caucasians and Hispanics had significantly higher participation rates than African Americans in almost all

recreation activities. Participation rates for athletic activities are higher for

African Americans and Hispanics than for Caucasians.

• Rural residents are more likely to participate in activities associated with

wildland areas than their urban counterparts. Urban residents are more likely

to participate in activities requiring specialized facilities. These differences

reflect the availability of nearby recreation opportunities.

• The implications of demographic changes for future recreation behavior are

difficult to predict. Recreation resource managers may face reduced growth in

the number of customers; increased customer diversity; and changing demands

for activities, the design of settings and facilities, and visitor programs.

Although the analyses reviewed above provide a detailed assessment of the

range of activities engaged in by residents of the Pacific Northwest region, they

provide little information on where individuals engage in recreation activities.

Because of this, like the RPA assessments, these assessments of recreation demand capture one component, which could be called “trip generation” (English

and Horne 1996). Planners can use this information to anticipate the numbers of

recreation trips likely to be generated from a given population center within a

given year or season. However, these demand assessments do not differentiate

between Forest Service and other ownerships, or even between public and private
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

20

land recreation resources. Forest Service planners and managers who use the

information provided must therefore make inferences regarding not only what

activities take place on public forest land but what proportion of activity rates

generated in a given population center are likely to impact a particular national

forest unit. The typical approach is to use the standard 200-mile travel-distance

zone to identify the relevant user base at Forest Service recreation destinations.

Although this provides a degree of spatial linkage of the participation measures

of recreation demand to recreation sites, it provides little information at scales

of spatial disaggregation at which site-level planning is implemented, and does

not provide insight into how changes in resource qualities and settings are likely

to affect visitation and demand.

Southern Alaska

A number of studies have been performed to assess recreation demand in Alaska,

particularly the south-central region composed largely of the Chugach National

Forest (Bowker 2001, Brooks and Haynes 2001, Colt et al. 2002). Colt et al. (2002)

provided a broad descriptive assessment of recreation and tourism in south-central

Alaska, focusing principally on the Chugach National Forest and Prince William

Sound. The study assesses the regional development contributions made by recreation and tourism associated with the Chugach and other natural areas of southcentral Alaska, and broad-scale trends in development of the recreation and

tourism sector of the south-central Alaska economy. The stated objectives are

to (1) describe recreation and tourism use on the Chugach, (2) describe overall

trends in recreation and tourism use, and (3) present a more detailed analysis of

two questions: How do people get to the Chugach? and What do they do when they

get there? Colt et al. (2002) pointed out that indicators of the recreation and

tourism economy are difficult to gain from sectoral economic data given the nature

of recreation expenditures, which are defined by their purpose and not on the

whole by the nature of the goods and services purchased (e.g., the purchase of 4x4

vehicles for recreational use versus commuting, or lodging purchased by tourists

versus business or other nonrecreational travelers). This is a common problem in

studying the economics of tourism, making the importance of this industry to

economic development more difficult to determine than that of other industries.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

21

The Colt et al. (2002) study provides an extensive review of these existing

sources of data on visitation, activities, visitor attitudes and satisfaction, cruise

ship travel, and tourism impacts.8

 Primary data were collected through 100 focus

groups and interviews of tourism operators and providers and general community

members. The principal findings of the study with regard to demand are associated

with the growth of outfitting services and mediated trips. Noted is the need for

greater access, particularly to “midcountry” areas, i.e., roaded natural settings with

interpretive facilities, and that, where such facilities exist, they are highly impacted. Although not quantitatively treated, the study does address the demand for

settings, in addition to activity-based participation rates, more directly than many

other studies. However, this was based principally on visitor attitude and satisfaction surveys and interviews with representatives of the tourism industry in Alaska.

Perhaps owing to the dominant role of out-of-state visitors and the extensive

tourism economy of southern Alaska, the study largely focuses on the implications

of tourism development rather than forest management for recreation demand and

supply in the region. In discussing resident versus visitor recreation demand, Colt

et al. (2002) note that most studies of visitation and planning efforts largely

neglect Alaska residents as a source of demand for recreation services. By a rough

calculation, however, the authors suggest that overall, outdoor recreation demand

among residents is likely to be four times that of out-of-state visitors.

Bowker (2001) undertakes a more quantitative analysis of recreation demand

among Alaska residents, although the study largely represents a regional expansion

of the RPA participation rate analyses (Cordell and Super 2000). The study’s

objectives are to estimate current annual Alaska resident participation and use of

the Chugach in 13 activities identified by planners as important, and to project

8

 Data sources used for the analysis include recreation information management (RIM)

reports and raw data, collected on the Chugach for forest planning purposes from 1989 to

1995, including trail registries, concessionaire reports, permit data, cruise ship passenger

data, and traffic counts at developed sites; USDA Forest Service Integrated National Forest

Resource Assessment (INFRA) data system reports documenting infrastructure and

inventory data; district-level permit data from outfitters and guides; and Chugach data from

1992 USDA Forest Service “CUSTOMER” nationwide recreation survey. Several caveats

are stated about data sources, including periods (1996-1997) where no data were collected,

changes in data collection methods over analysis period, spotty reporting by permit holders,

and other problems. Consequently, the authors attempted to address acknowledged

shortcomings in the data by pulling from as many sources as available.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

22

future annual participation in the same activities. The analysis supplemented the

RPA participation estimates with additional recreation data sources, all of which

were probability sampled, state-level household surveys with no information on

sites visited.9

Bowker (2001) identified three types of recreation demand models: sitespecific user models, site-specific aggregate models, and population-specific

models. Given the intensive data needs of the first two, Bowker developed statewide population models, using both count and individual data similar to those used

by Bowker et al. (1999). Model coefficients from activity models were combined

with census-based projections of demographic characteristics of population growth

to develop participation and consumption projections for each of the activities,

producing 76 models and activity-rate projections in all. Because of the lack of

site-specific data, Bowker (2001) stressed caution in applying model projection

numbers directly to the Chugach and noted the need for planners to use managerial knowledge in applying estimates to any given site. Nonetheless, projections indicate that forest use will increase in most activities analyzed, and resource

capacity is likely to be exceeded before 2020. Planners should expect public pressure to maintain quality of recreation experience, requiring increasing capacity

over at least the next 20 years.

Brooks and Haynes (2001) synthesized and critiqued the studies performed by

Colt et al. (2002) and Bowker (2001), addressing the broader context of recreation

planning and its effect on economic development in south-central Alaska. Brooks

and Haynes (2001) noted that, although these two studies provided a substantial

analytical base for recreation and tourism planning on the Chugach National Forest, significant oversights of both studies included failure to (1) address the management and planning of landowners adjacent to the Chugach National Forest, (2)

address capacity of recreation lands, both on the Chugach and elsewhere within the

region, and (3) address the relationship between the quality of visitor experience

and demand for recreation.

The principal point of criticism noted by Brooks and Haynes (2001), which

applies to many similar population-level studies of recreation demand, is that the

projections of participation assume that resource capacity plays no role in constraining participation. In fact, the authors pointed out, most developed sites on

the Chugach are used at or above capacity at peak periods, and even dispersed

9

 Recreation data sources used included the Alaska State SCORP and the 1995 NSRE

surveys. These were supplemented with the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and

Nonconsumptive Wildlife Associated Recreation (FHWAR96, USDC Department of

the Census).
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

23

recreation areas are limited by concentration of access nodes. Although clearly

Bowker (2001), Colt et al. (2002) and RPA authors are aware that supply and

demand are not independent, beyond the abstract representation of a constrained

supply scenario posed in the 1989 RPA assessment, no broad-based demand

analysis yet produced for Forest Service resource assessment or planning exercises

integrates demand and supply analytically. Brooks and Haynes noted that, owing to

data limitations, both the Colt et al. and Bowker studies lacked site-level information, including destinations, and focused exclusively on current use and activities.

The latter is problematic because it provides no basis for addressing newly emerging use trends and activities. Given the degree to which much tourism-based

recreational use in Alaska is commercially mediated, and that rapid changes in

visitation can be affected by discrete changes in the commercial recreation industry, this may be particularly critical for recreation planning in Alaska. In identifying the lack of a spatial component in these analyses, which is endemic in recreation demand studies conducted at the regional scale, Brooks and Haynes (2001)

repeated the critiques made by other authors of most recreation assessments

conducted to date.

Site-Level Recreation Demand Analysis: Travel Cost and

Hedonic Price Analysis Studies

The above review has covered selected studies conducted to support regional

planning and national assessments of recreation demand. As such, the studies

reviewed thus far have been addressed to a large spatial scale. By far, the majority

of economic studies of recreation demand, however, have been conducted at a far

smaller scale, focusing on the benefit-cost implications of management changes

at particular sites. This and other related nonmarket valuation literature is referenced below to identify research approaches to addressing spatial aspects of

demand that have potential for application to a broader study of recreation demand

at multiple scales.

Formal economic demand analysis has been applied extensively in recreation

economics to measure the response of recreation consumers to changes in the

opportunity cost of recreational experiences (Loomis and Walsh 1997). Because

public land recreation is a public good10 and market transactions cannot fully

10

 Public goods are characterized by two properties: nonexcludability, in which the ability to

restrict access and ration by price is constrained; and nonrivalry, in which one consumer’s

use of a resource does not limit another consumer’s use of the same resource, such as a

scenic view. Although clearly some public recreation resources are subject to congestion

and are not purely nonrival, and exclusion is feasible at many recreation sites, a strong

mandate to provide a broader public benefit by providing minimally restricted access to

public recreation land is well established for federal and state land management agencies.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

24

capture the value of these experiences to society, economists have developed tools

 to indirectly measure the relationship between recreation behavior and its associated costs. The extensive literature of travel cost analysis and hedonic recreation

modeling is built on the proposition that the nonmarket component of recreation

expenditures can be indirectly measured by observing the time cost of travel to

recreation sites. To make these models function, it is typically necessary to control

for independent factors like demographic characteristics of the recreationists and

quality attributes of the recreation site visited. Although the latter are considered

demand-shifting factors (Loomis and Walsh 1997), in a broader context they are

attributes of the supplied recreation good that the visitor considers in the same

decision calculus as cost, and which are similarly subject to limited manipulation

by resource managers. Visitation to recreation sites is dependent on preferences

of actual and potential visitors, which are subject to change as demographic, social

and economic characteristics of populations change. Significant changes in these

characteristics occur within local populations, sometimes quite rapidly, and can

in principle be tracked spatially. Thus, visitation and the response thereof to

changes in user characteristics and constraints and site-quality attributes (e.g.,

access, cost, and congestion) and other demand parameters are explicitly spatial:

recreationists from particular localities are attracted to particular places with

particular characteristics.

The economics literature on nonmarket valuation is vast, and an extended

review, even of studies pertaining specifically to site-specific recreation demand, is

beyond the scope of this document. The purpose of including a brief discussion is

to identify potential applications of the techniques developed in the literature to

address gaps in recreation demand studies reviewed above that have been consistently pointed out by various authors. Economic studies performed to date are

largely focused on estimating economic values for visitor days, WTP for management changes to particular sites, and welfare impacts of fee-based recreation on

public lands.11 The three principal valuation techniques, hedonic price analysis,

travel cost method (TCM), and contingent valuation method, are all well-documented elsewhere (Freeman 2003, Haab and McConnell 2002, Herriges and Kling

1999, Loomis and Walsh 1997). Houston et al. (2002) also provided a brief review

11

 Puttkammer (2001) provides an annotated bibliography of papers on recreation fees,

including sections devoted to the influence of fees on recreation visitation and use patterns

and visitor response to price and price changes. The bibliography is not restricted to

valuation studies and includes social science studies and policy papers on the role of feebased recreation on public lands. What emerges from a review of the annotations is that the

effect of fees on recreation has been well-studied, and that many economic studies have

found visitation to be relatively nonresponsive to fees but strongly responsive to other site

characteristics like crowding.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

25

of valuation approaches used in estimating the economic value of water resources

that broadly applies to recreation resources as well.

Rosenberger and Loomis (2001) listed some 131 separate primary research

studies of recreation values, with 701 distinct measures for 21 recreational activities. The majority of these studies used the TCM for estimating economic value

per visitor day for recreation uses. Given the lack of price information for recreational use of public land, the TCM uses the variable costs of participation, e.g.,

transportation, fees, and rentals, as a proxy for the total price of recreation participation. Given variation in these “prices” and the number of trips generated to

different locations, economists estimate demand functions that relate these two

variables. Freeman (2003), Loomis and Walsh (1997), and other sources provide

technical details on implementing the TCM, and the basic structure of the technique is well known in the recreation planning field. Innovations in the technique

focus on controlling for the effect of visitation to multiple sites on a single trip

and on improved methods for controlling for variation in site qualities (Englin and

Mendelsohn 1991, Smith and Kaoru 1987, Woodward et al. 2001). Most theoretical work in the recreation economics and other nonmarket valuation literature is

relevant mainly to improving the validity and accuracy of economic welfare measures. Research such as that conducted by Englin and Mendelsohn (1991), however,

addresses user response to site characteristics other than relative cost of access,

including site characteristics and availability and quality of substitute sites, which

have a more direct application to estimating visitation changes. These innovations

have occurred through the integration of standard TCM approaches with hedonic

price analysis techniques that have been used to measure the value of amenity and

other attributes in housing markets (Earnhart 2001, Edmonds 1983, Geoghegan et

al. 1997), forming a hybrid technique known as the hedonic TCM (Araujo 2002,

Englin and Mendelsohn 1991, Pendleton 1999, Pendleton and Mendelsohn 2000,

Smith and Kaoru 1987). Although the hedonic TCM has been in use for some

20 years since it was proposed by Brown and Mendelsohn (1984), more recent

improvements in spatial data methods and statistical models render the application

of the technique for broader applications more feasible. A continuing problem in

the travel cost literature is accounting for opportunity cost of travel differentials

between individuals and the validity of economic welfare measures. However,

statistical methods developed in these literatures can be used to estimate hedonic

models of visitation as a function of site characteristics, while avoiding some of

the theoretical problems associated with economic benefits estimation (Lawson

and Manning 2002). Visitation modeling is discussed further below in the context

of needed research.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

26

Needed Research

The review of previous demand analysis work performed by and for the Forest

Service principally indicates that there is a need for better understanding of demand at multiple scales, and in additional dimensions beyond that of populationbased participation rates and the economic value of activities. As noted above,

Driver and Brown’s (1978) recreation demand hierarchy identified the multiple

levels of recreation demand, from demand for activity experiences, to opportunities to recreate in settings that promote desired experiences, to the psychological

benefits that those experiences induce. Because public land managers provide

recreation settings and opportunities, it can be argued that the most relevant

component or level of demand for managers is that for opportunity settings.

Indeed, as Bergstrom et al. (1994) found in reviewing responses of planners and

managers to RPA recreation demand assessments, needed information included

effects of qualitative changes in settings on supply and demand trends, improved

connection between units of measure of supply and demand, and effects of demographic and socioeconomic changes on visitation. McCool and Cole (2001) raised

these concerns and called for better planning and decision support to integrate

supply and demand at the regional scale. These are not unrelated issues, and in

fact, a broader analysis of recreation demand should integrate an understanding

of the types of demand information needed at different scales, from site-level

management to national assessments and policy analysis. Further integrative work

involving recreation researchers, planners, and managers must ultimately be

initiated to identify a research agenda for Forest Service-sponsored research on

recreation demand.

The following are broad areas of knowledge development suggested to support Forest Service recreation planning and management. First, improved analytical methods to understand recreation demand in a spatial context, integrated with

inventories of recreation resources, would address some of the concerns raised

about the disjunction of supply and demand measures. Second, there is a further

need for integrated decision support and technology transfer to make the emerging body of recreation research available to managers and decisionmakers. Third,

unmanaged recreation (i.e., activities and use at levels exceeding management

capacity to maintain resource integrity) has emerged as a principal policy concern

at the highest levels of federal land management. Changes in Forest Service policy

on access for high-impact, unmanaged recreation uses will provide direction for

planners and managers. Thus, understanding the response to administrative

changes (e.g., rules and incentives), as well as access and settings changes, is

critical to responding to the behavior of unmanaged users and maintaining resource
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

27

protection. Finally, place-based planning has been suggested and is being used

increasingly as a method to align management of public lands with preferences of

the public. The approach emphasizes public involvement in decisionmaking for

specific places on the landscape. Development of science-based tools to support

and inform the process is needed to improve the tractability and fairness of management and planning decisions made in this fashion. More detailed suggestions

for research direction in each of these areas are provided below.

Spatial Visitation Modeling

As noted previously, information resources available to recreation planners have

increased and improved dramatically over those available when the first cycle of

forest planning began in 1982. Applying improved knowledge in planning, however, will become increasingly difficult as other resources available for recreation

planning and implementation diminish owing to funding cuts and widespread

retirements imminent within the agency (National Research Council 2002). With

diminishing resources available to planning and management (USDA Forest

Service 2003b), the need to leverage analytical tools will increase. Although

models are a poor substitute for the intimate, place-based knowledge developed by

managers, models, if used appropriately, are an important complement to manager

insight.

Spatial modeling of recreation visitation is one area of research that could

effectively leverage existing information from extensive national recreation surveys, particularly the NSRE and NVUM, spatial inventories of recreation

resources, and analytical techniques used extensively in nonmarket economics and

recently entering the broader recreation literature. Integrated analysis of existing

geographic information on recreational resources with site-level visitation patterns

could permit evaluation of the impacts of resource and policy changes on spatial

patterns of recreation use. For example, access restrictions are more likely to displace recreation use than eliminate it. The ability to project the degree and spatial

pattern of displacement would provide an improved analytical basis for forest

planning. More broadly, the current direction of NFS recreation planning reverses

the past focus on accommodating all uses everywhere in favor of promoting uses to

which a given site is most suited, in the context of the variety of desired uses and

recreation resources available regionally (USDA Forest Service 2003a). Simulating

regional reallocation of recreational resources spatially and among user groups

would assist forest planners in identifying the “market niche” for forest units and

would enable regional planners to assist forest-level planners to improve coordinated planning for recreation use across units.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

28

Spatial demand models, with capacity to forecast visitation in alternative management scenarios (e.g., road closures, riparian area restrictions, and thinning and

harvest scenarios), would provide better and more useful information to regional

recreation planners, forest supervisors, and site-level managers. A spatial model of

recreation visitation that associates recreation settings and the geographic user base

with visitation patterns would allow projection of the effect of resource changes

and use trends on the spatial pattern of visitation among user groups. Parameterizing proposed planning alternatives in terms of changes in recreation settings would

permit model analysis to project visitation changes resulting from plan alternatives.

By specifying visitation as a function of recreation settings, a measurement of

demand commensurate with supply would be produced, permitting projection of

capacity shortfalls and resource impacts. This would also provide a means for

anticipating impacts to the ecological condition of the landscape from recreation

use and a bridge to planning and management analyses for other resources.

Formal economic analysis of recreation demand by using travel cost and

choice modeling methods has produced powerful analytical tools and improved

statistical methods for analyzing demand for recreation resources; however, study

results are typically site specific. Benefits transfer (the process of generalizing

benefits estimates from site-specific studies) is an exercise of applying averages

from disparate locations to particular sites (Rosenberger and Loomis 2001), and is

generally constrained to estimation of economic values of visitation. The benefitstransfer process typically loses the detail of user response to site changes captured

in individual studies. The reliance on generalizing from site-specific studies is due

to lack of the extensive data required for statistical models of larger spatial scale

visitation patterns. The NVUM survey provides detailed information on visitation

levels, visitor activities and visitor use patterns from a carefully designed sampling

of recreation sites on each national forest. To date, this information has been used

only to estimate current seasonal visitor loads for each national forest. The NSRE

and state SCORP surveys provide spatially referenced “inventories” of the userbase population and activity participation rates. Projections based on these data

permit anticipation of future participation in a large variety of activities as local-,

regional-, and national-level demographic and socioeconomic changes occur.12

The scope and detail of the data from both of these studies, however, provide an

12

 The NVUM sample sizes at the forest level are inadequate to support statistically valid

visitation projections at finer scales. However, pooling samples over multiple forests at the

regional or subregional scale could potentially permit statistical models to render valid

projections at forest-level or finer scales.
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

29

opportunity for data-driven spatial analysis of recreation behavior on multiple

scales. Coupling the site visitation data provided by NVUM and participation data

from NSRE and SCORP surveys with the extensive GIS data available on recreation resource inventories will permit statistically testing the influence of physical

and managerial (e.g., fees and permitting requirements) attributes of recreational

settings on visitation and use patterns. Valuation might be a secondary priority but

would be feasible given spatial model projections of visitation coupled with

opportunity cost of travel time measures and methods for accounting for multisite

trips. Although Rosenberger et al. (2001) have documented the large number of

valuation studies performed to date, these have occurred on an ad hoc basis, and to

produce a broader analysis of recreation values for forest planning efforts, the

authors have produced a set of meta-analyses of these existing studies. Travel cost

analysis of NVUM data might permit a complementary method for estimating

economic values for recreation management. Current data limitations may preclude

development of models with useful predictive properties. However, sufficient data

exist to initiate a research program focused on development of methods for analysis and hypothesis testing.

A spatial visitation model would integrate many of the information gaps

identified by researchers and agency personnel noted above. This is, of course, not

to say that predicting visitation changes would answer all the relevant questions

about recreation demand. However, a systematic approach to modeling visitation

would provide a structure for drawing together much of the existing knowledge on

recreation demand to support planning and decisionmaking, as well as a structure

for bridging the various scales of analysis required at different levels of

decisionmaking.

Integrated Decision Support

To address the complex relationship between recreation demand and visitation, to

provide recreational experiences that the public desires, and to integrate recreation

management with ecosystem management and resource protection, more detailed

understanding of the behavior of recreationists on the landscape is required. Thus,

further research, including the spatial recreation demand modeling discussed

above, is necessary. However, improved synthesis of research and technology

transfer are needed to integrate existing knowledge into recreation management

and decisionmaking. Ongoing regional- and national-level surveys provide detailed

information about (1) the recreational behavior and preferences of the public, and

trends therein, measured at the population or community level; and (2) visitation

levels, visitor behavior, and visitor satisfaction at specific locations on national
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

30

forests. These studies provide much greater information than that available for

previous forest planning, in essence, providing detailed inventories of current

users. The Natural Resource Information System Human Dimensions Module

provides a powerful model of technical transfer to render this information useful to

planners and decisionmakers. These data sources provide the potential for powerful

analyses to support planning and policy; however, by themselves, they provide a

static picture of current conditions (although trends in participation have been

projected based on anticipated demographic changes) and only limited capacity to

evaluate the impacts of potential changes in the resource base. Perhaps the most

fundamental need for advancement in recreation research is for a comprehensive

approach to integrated analysis and knowledge transfer that would provide greater

decision support at all scales of recreation planning, policy, and management. This

would require understanding how recreation demand, particularly visitation and

visitor satisfaction, respond to changes in the resource base over which managers

and policymakers have some degree of control. Additional exogenous factors, such

as regional supply of recreation opportunities (substitutes), population growth, and

demographic changes in the user base are also subject to change, with theoretically

estimable effects on visitor response. As noted above, numerous studies have been

completed by university and Forest Service researchers that provide extensive

knowledge and insights on the behavior and preferences of recreationists; however,

a systematic approach to integrating and rendering this knowledge available to

planners and decisionmakers is lacking.

Unmanaged Recreation

Unmanaged recreation has been identified as one of the principal threats to sustainable management of public lands in the coming decades (Bosworth 2003).

Although the term “unmanaged recreation” is rather ambiguous, attention seems

focused on unauthorized use of public wildland for dispersed OHV use. National

trends indicate relatively rapid growth in OHV use, with the number of participants

in OHV activities increasing by 8 million participants between 1982 and 1995

(Cordell and McKinney 1999), with a 16 percent increase projected nationally

over the next 50 years (Bowker et al. 1999). The authors of the RPA studies note,

however, that growth in OHV use may have been constrained by inadequate supply

of areas in which to undertake desired recreational uses. There is currently little

research to indicate whether the unauthorized use of roaded and backcountry areas

for OHV use, particularly user-developed trails through ecologically fragile areas,

is the result of insufficient capacity of officially dedicated OHV-use areas. There is

some evidence to indicate that, like many other dispersed area users, many OHV
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

31

enthusiasts prefer unmanaged, unregimented settings and may be somewhat unresponsive to an increase in developed settings (Clark et al. 1984). Off-highway

vehicle access restrictions and closures of roadless areas have been the subjects

of considerable controversy (Associated Press 2003, Israelsen 2003, USDI Bureau

of Land Management 2001), and it is unclear how successful these measures are

likely to be, even assuming they survive the policy process. Although there is a

clear mandate from Forest Service leadership to address intensive unauthorized

recreation activities, and a lack of any broad public support for motorized activities

on public lands (Shields 2002), no clear strategy has been proposed. Further

research is needed to identify how these activities are likely to respond to management and policy initiatives, including fines, fees, development of substitute sites,

access restrictions, education, or others.

Place-Based Planning

User conflicts and resource protection objectives make satisfying all feasible uses

at all sites an unsustainable management objective. A problem for planning and

management is how to identify desirable uses for particular recreation sites while

ensuring that the demand for activity opportunities is addressed within a regional

context. To match recreation sites to the uses for which they are most suitable, a

process is needed that identifies the “market niche” for a recreation resource, in

relation to the variety of sites available at scales from the 2-hour-drive zone to

regional and national levels. McCool and Cole (2001) addressed this in their

suggestion for improved regional planning and integration of planning across

scales. One approach that has been proposed for the process of identifying the

suitability of uses for recreation resources is place-based planning (Pugh 2003,

Williams and Stewart 1998). This process involves identifying “places” on the

recreational landscape, i.e., broad sites or zones that are distinguished from others

by the subjective experience of visitors to that place. The challenge for research is

to develop a process that improves the tractability of both the public involvement

process, which is both informationally and managerially intensive, and the integrative process that identifies the union of places with the recreational uses that are

emphasized by management and outreach at each place.

In a market context, the discovery of “highest and best use” of a given set of

productive resources is driven by the incentives of the market, with each individual

agent considering the available resources in the context of the range of demands

and competing producers. The entrepreneurial process thus identifies the market

niche that produces the maximum net financial return. The market paradigm

clearly does not apply directly to public recreation lands, which must be managed
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

32

in the public trust for various market and nonmarket benefits, many of which

cannot tractably be quantified. Indeed, the market model is undesirable for various

reasons, but employing the process of niche development that occurs in the marketplace does not imply that a commercialized recreation experience should be the

result. One challenge for the planning process is to approximate the discovery of

optimal or preferred niche for places in the recreational landscape, which in the

market is driven by entrepreneurship and market segmentation. The challenge for

research is therefore to develop information-gathering techniques and tools and

conceptual and analytical models to aid the discovery and integrative processes.

This includes spatial recreation demand models to predict visitation changes and

supply models to identify the desired and sustainable level of recreation use at each

place or site. It also includes a process for eliciting public and managerial sense of

place for the variety of locations in the recreational landscape. The more complex

task is to develop a decision model that integrates these processes at multiple

scales to identify market niches for individual recreation sites in the context of

recreational demand and supply of recreational experiences available on public and

private lands.

Conclusions

The issue of demand for recreation on public lands has been the subject of much

theoretical development and applied research. The complexity of conceptualizing

and measuring recreation supply and demand has given rise to numerous frameworks for analysis, originating from a variety of social science disciplines. Information needs driven by site-level management, forest planning, and national-scale

RPA assessments have given rise to different measures of recreation demand. One

result of the many efforts to address recreation demand is that the term itself has

come to have many different meanings. Common quantitative uses of the term

refer to participation in recreational activities and visitation to recreational sites.

Qualitatively, the term often refers to the general preferences of the public regarding use and access to recreation resources. This review suggests a more useful

definition of demand, based in economic theory but broader than the common

textbook use of the term.

Recreation demand for public land is the consumption (visitation) by users

of recreation resources and the response of consumption to changes in supply

and other conditions. The simplest application of the economic model of demand

measures the response of consumption to changing price while holding all else

constant. In the context of public land recreation, however, price is rarely the most

important variable. Consumption response to other conditions of supply, i.e., site
Conceptualizing and Measuring Demand for Recreation on National Forests: A Review and Synthesis

33

conditions like access and setting, are more important for many planning and management purposes. This problem analysis highlights a central problem in understanding recreation demand: no framework for measurement of recreation demand

has been extensively applied that integrates at multiple scales with measures of

supply for purposes of Forest Service decision support.

A review of recreation demand assessments from the national RPA and sitelevel formal economic demand studies indicates that additional information is

needed beyond that provided by these studies. Forest planners typically have

access to data for two measures of recreation demand from RPA assessments: regional population-level participation rates in recreation activities (e.g., per capita

number of developed camping trips per year) and estimates of economic value for

a visitor-day by activity. Participation rates provide forest planners with partial and

indirect information on the use of particular recreation resources. The RPA recreation values provide estimates of the value of recreational experiences, but provide

little information on how management affects those values. Visitation estimates

produced by the NVUM survey, only recently becoming available, add a much

needed dimension to the current picture of recreation demand.

However, current demand information accessible to most recreation planners

still provides only a static view of recreation use. As providers of recreation opportunities, Forest Service and other public land managers need richer information

on the effects of management changes on recreation use. Evaluation of forest plan

alternatives and management decisions are incomplete with static estimates of use.

Analytical tools that permit estimation of users’ responses to changes in settings,

infrastructure, and access will permit better evaluation of prospective changes to

these characteristics of the recreation resources on public lands. Understanding the

settings that attract different groups of users and quantifying their effects will

permit better planning in the face of demographic and behavioral changes in the

user base.

This problem analysis proposes four areas for research, both in development

of analytical methods and in particular applied areas of recreation planning and

policy:

• Improved spatial models of recreation use and visitation

• Integrated decision support and technology transfer to make the emerging

body of recreation research available to managers and decisionmakers

• Research on response of high-impact, unmanaged recreation uses to

administrative changes (e.g., rules and incentives) as well as access,

infrastructure, and settings changes to better support resource protection
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-645

34

• Development of science-based tools to support and inform place-based

planning to improve the tractability and efficiency of management and

planning decisions made in this fashion

With increasing urban and rural populations drawn to areas with easy access to

public recreation resources, public use of national forests and grasslands will

increase for the foreseeable future. This increasing use occurs at a time of declining budgets and staff devoted to recreation planning and backlogs in funding for

deferred maintenance of recreation infrastructure. Efficient and effective decisionsupport tools for forest planning and coordination in recreation planning at regional scales will aid recreation planners and managers to meet the mandates of

Forest Service policy and serve the outdoor recreation needs of the public.

Recreation demand is widely recognized as an inadequately understood

phenomenon, one that will become increasingly critical to understand as human

populations expand and natural settings are used more heavily. This review has

identified several areas of needed and priority research; however, it reflects the

limited perspectives of its author. As noted above, broader consensus on a research

agenda for recreation demand is needed, which cannot be achieved in the context

of a single document. A broader forum is needed for discussion and identification

of short- and long-term research needs and should draw together researchers,

managers, and planners to reach a broader consensus.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the Pacific Northwest Research Station’s Focused Science

Delivery Program for funding of this research, and Steve McCool and Don English

for comments on a draft version of the review.

Metric Equivalents

When you know: Multiply by: To get:

Miles 0.621 Kilometers

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