CONJOINT ANALYSIS OF DEER HUNTING

Abstract

This paper develops a logit-based conjoint analysis of willingness to pay for individual attributes of deer-hunting trips. Since deer-hunting success is uncertain, willingness to pay for enhanced likelihood of bagging a deer, rather than for certain success, is evaluated. Implicit costs of recreational travel time are also evaluated from hypothetical trade-offs between travel time and trip expenditures. The valuation of travel time derived here appears to reflect more the opportunity cost of foregone hunting than the opportunity cost of foregone work. This implies that travel-cost analyses of recreational demand, which impute costs of recreational travel solely from wage data, can yield biased valuations of recreational amenities.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,