A Sequential Choice Model of Recreation Behavior

The travel cost model is the standard model used in the recreation demand literature. This model assumes that the decision on the number of trips to a particular site in a given period (a season, for example) is determined at the beginning of the period. For certain types of recreation activity, this decision may be more appropriately modeled as a sequential process, in which the decision of whether or not to take each additional trip is made after all previous trips have occurred. This decision is dependent on the realization of random variables on previous trips as well as travel costs. A model is developed in which the choice of a discrete number of sequentially chosen trips to a given site is specified as a function of site-specific variables and variables realized on previous trips. This model's advantage over the traditional travel cost model is that it specifies discrete, nonnegative integer values for the number of trips and allows intraseasonal effects to determine the probability of taking each additional trip.