Do User Fees Exclude Low-income People from Resource-based Recreation?
- 1 September 2000
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Leisure Research
- Vol. 32 (3) , 341-357
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00222216.2000.11949920
Abstract
A mail survey of New Hampshire and Vermont households shows that although user fees are widely accepted, they may substantially reduce participation in resource-based recreation by those earning less than $30,000 per year. For example, 23% of low-income respondents indicated that they had either reduced use or gone elsewhere as a result of recent fee increases, while only 11% of high-income users had made such changes. A conjoint analysis also suggests that low-income respondents are much more responsive to access fees than high-income respondents. And we find that a $5 daily fee for use of public lands would affect about 49% of low-income people as compared to 33% of high-income respondents. We conclude that potential impacts of this magnitude highlight several critical problems in the design of recreation fee programs.Keywords
This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
- Are We Welcome? African American Racial Acceptance in Leisure Activities and the Importance Given to Children's LeisureJournal of Leisure Research, 1999
- Anticipated Responses to a Fee Program: The Key is TrustJournal of Leisure Research, 1999
- Stated Choice Models for Predicting The Impact Of User Fees at Public Recreation SitesJournal of Leisure Research, 1999
- Appropriate Fees for Wilderness Day Use: Pricing Decisions for Recreation on Public LandJournal of Leisure Research, 1999
- Structural Equation Modeling of Users' Response to Wilderness Recreation FeesJournal of Leisure Research, 1999
- Demand and Marketing Study at Army Corps of Engineers Day-Use AreasPublished by Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) ,1994
- Measuring the discriminatory impact associated with higher recreational feesLeisure Sciences, 1992
- An Empirical Investigation of the Influence of Information on Reference Prices for Public Swimming PoolsJournal of Leisure Research, 1987
- Pricing for Efficiency and Revenue in Public Recreation AreasJournal of Leisure Research, 1984
- The Distribution of Income Among Wilderness UsersJournal of Leisure Research, 1975