Valuing Nature with Travel Cost Models: A Manual (New Horizons in Environmental Economics series)

Increasingly, natural environments are being changed by our activities, and potential human uses of natural resources are often incompatible with environmental protection goals. Travel cost models supply economic information to estimate values in environmental decision-making that otherwise are not available. In the absence of this information, non-market benefits are likely to be ignored in the decision-making process. An important question faced by policy makers centers around the appropriate mix of policies to provide a balance in the use of environments in their natural state versus commodity production. Appropriate analyses of rival policies regarding land usage depend on the availability of data on benefits and costs. This book provides indispensable guidance to the TCM (Travel Cost Method) methodology and its uses, as well as highlighting areas where further development is necessary. The book presents a self-contained treatment of TCM along with a wide range of applications to natural resource and environmental policy questions. It will be an indispensable tool for policymakers in both government and NGO's, natural resource site managers as well as academics and researchers.