Reauthorizing the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act: Impact to Recreation Demand of National Forests in the Southwest

In 2005, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act gave public land agencies discretion in the management of funds collected through recreation fees. However, this legislation is set to expire in 2015, which will lead to a reduction in available financial resources to maintain recreation services and to protect the environment. We use a unique dataset to analyze the impact of changes in fee legislation to Southwestern National Forests. Given the geographical extent of the region and the disaggregated nature of forest land, we employ a corner solution travel cost model to analyze the impact of changes in the fee legislation on Non-Trail and Trail recreationist to Southwestern National Forests and reduction in amenity service. Results show that not renewing the current legislation will have a greater impact on the welfare of Non-trail recreationists; an increase of $5 on current fees will have a relatively similar, but negative effect on both types of recreationists. A flat fee is expected to have little effect on Trail recreationists, while introducing a $5 fee on eligible sites will have a relatively larger effect on Non-trail recreationists. JEL Codes: C35, Q23 a Corresponding author, Washington State University b University of New Mexico c Researcher, Statistics Norway, Oslo, Norway. d U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula, MT. e U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, CO. Acknowledgements: We thank Carolyn Sieg for research support. Funding was provided under Joint Venture Agreements (06-JV-199 and 05-JV-257) between the Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, and the Rocky Mountain Research Station (Flagstaff, AZ, and Fort Collins, CO, respectively), U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. We are grateful to seminar participants at the 2014 Annual Midwestern Economics Association Meeting in Evanston, IL, and at the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.