By estimating such impacts as changes in employment and income, economic impact assessments (EIAs) help fisheries managers, elected officials, administrators, and interest groups describe the effects of policy and investment decisions. Such assessments also reveal the distribution of economic effects across regional sectors. Compared to benefit-cost analyses, EIAs are less appropriate for measuring social benefits and require somewhat different data. Among the various EIA techniques, the hybrid data input-output model can satisfy the widest range offisheries information needs with reasonable cost and acceptable levels of accuracy, except perhaps when long-range forecasts are required. Multipliers, a deceptively simple EIA result, are prone to misinterpretation and misuse primarily when analysts fail to state the type of multipliers calculated, the context in which they were derived, and how they should be used to help guide policy and investment decisions. In recreational fisheries, typical "ratio" multipliers should not be applied to consumer spending to compute a total impact figure; instead, a "Keynesian" relationship, which expresses additional impacts per unit of consumer spending, should be applied. Regardless of the EIA procedure or multiplier type employed, the limiting factor in the natural resources field is quality data on consumer spending and industrial output. All three tasks were aimed at helping the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inject state-of-the-art EIA methods and models into their efforts at determining the economic impacts of recreation and tourism. The first task was a review and evaluation of the EIA literature. The second was a technical meeting of experts to assess the economic impacts of recreation and tourism and to verify, refute, or clarify the results of the literature review (Propst 1985). The third was development of a nationwide data collection procedure and survey instrument to provide the data base for EIAs of recreation and tourism (Cordell et al. 1987). The data are being analyzed and results will provide further insight into the EIA process for recreation and tourism. Benefits versus Impacts Distinctions between two sets of terms are important: "benefits" versus "impacts," and "benefit-cost analysis" versus "economic impact analysis." In recreation and tourism, "benefits" mean the additional value of goods and services produced at a particular site. Benefits include use and entry fees (if any) and an estimate of the amount recreationists would be willing to pay above these fees (Dwyer and Bowes 1979). For example, the Great Lakes provide benefits to anglers as measured by how much they are willing to pay to fish there. Expenditures not specifically made for the use of a site (e.g., expenses for equipment, food, travel, or lodging) are generally not used to calculate benefits. Travel cost and contingent valuation methods are the most commonly used pro-450 PROCEDURES FOR ECONOMIC IMPACT ASSESSMENT 451 cedures for determining the benefits of recreatio...