Modeling recreation demand and fees at national parks

The paper develops a model to estimate the effect of entry fees on U.S. national parks visits. Monte Carlo analysis demonstrates that a Poisson-estimated exponential model is preferable to a log-linear model of tourist arrivals. We apply the model to panel data of U.S. national parks tourism to estimate the effect of fees on annual visitation. The results provide evidence that visits to U.S. national parks are inelastic with respect to fees. We use the model to predict the effects of two proposed fee revisions.