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The focus of the research reported in this paper has been to estimate recreation values for beaches over approximately 1400 kilometres of coastline along the Queensland coast. The study is notable at an international level because it assesses recreation values to a general type of recreation asset rather than to a specific site, and because it focuses on the values of the local resident population. Negative binomial models have been used to estimate both the visit rate and recreation values associated with beach visits in different regional areas. The value of a single beach visit was estimated per person at $35.09, which extrapolates to $450 million in beach recreation values per annum. These values are likely to be conservative because opportunity costs incurred to live closer to the beach (e.g. housing premiums) have not been assessed. Contingent behaviour models were used to estimate the values of potential declines in water quality, with marginal effects assessed at $1.30 per recreation trip to avoid each 1% decline in water quality.

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The Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia supports several commercial fisheries and a largely tourist-based recreational fishery. The results of a survey of 427 recreational fishing parties visiting the main town, Karumba, between March and September 2006 were examined using the bootstrap method to estimate confidence intervals for mean tourist catch and harvest of grunter, Pomadasys kaakan (Cuvier), and other recreational target species. Tourist anglers harvested between 99.8 and 117 t of P. kaakan and 32.6-38.2 t of blue salmon, Eleutheronema tetradactylum (Shaw), during the survey period. Resident recreational anglers harvested an additional 15-35 t of P. kaakan, but very little E. tetradactylum. In comparison, commercial harvest was 19 t of P. kaakan and 64 t of E. tetradactylum in the whole of the Queensland section of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The results underscore the need for appropriately collected recreational fishing data to support integrated fisheries management at the bioregional scale, and in the case of angling-based tourist destinations, underpin a diversification of the tourist product. K E Y W O R D S : anglers, bootstrap, fisheries management, Gulf of Carpentaria, harvest quantification, tourists.

Transaction costs are fundamental to implementing, evaluating, and monitoring public policy/programs for social, economic, and/or environmental welfare. Empirical accounting for transaction costs helps identify and evaluate adaptive public policy or program arrangements that improve future institutional choices under uncertainty. However, examples of empirical transaction cost studies are few, due largely to persistent measurement challenges and limits to transaction cost comprehension. A lack of studies limits both insights into the importance of transaction costs in institutional design and validation of theories surrounding cost trajectories over time under different institutional arrangements. In this paper we apply time series analysis to a unique database of public salinity management program transaction costs in Australia's Murray‐Darling Basin. Our study provides insights into the role of transaction costs in institutional efficiency and on empirical approaches to considering relationships between observed transaction cost trajectories and the efficiency of associated institutions. Our results indicate that the Murray‐Darling Basin salinity management program succeeded in generating persistent declines in transaction costs and river salinity levels over time. We suggest some possible reasons for this that are associated with institutional design and reflect on what these findings may mean for other jurisdictions.

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