Valuing recreational services: A review of methods with application to New South Wales National Parks

Valuation of recreation-related cultural ecosystem services provided by Pirin National Park, Bulgaria

“…In the valuation process, the assessment of ecosystem capacity to provide RRCES does not characterise the supply of recreationrelated ecosystem services. It is represented only by the actual services flow received (used) by the beneficiaries (Pelletier et al 2021).…”

“…The System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) provides an opportunity to incorporate protected areas assets into formal decision-making frameworks through accounting of ecosystems and the services they provide (United Nations 2019, Pelletier et al 2021). The protected areas (PA) supply range of basic recreation benefits to the society.…”

“…It is not possible to fully separate the different spiritual, intellectual, and physical links between human cultures and ecosystems (MA 2005). Existing experience in RRCES accounting includes application of different valuation methods, many of which have been used for valuation of the RRCES provided by the National Parks or other protected areas (Remme et al 2015;Horlings et al 2020;Barton et al 2019, Pelletier et al 2021, Wang et al 2022. Pelletier et al (2021) implement eight different accounting approaches to obtain values for the RRCES in the New South Wales (NSW) National Parks, Australia: Random Utility Method, Activitybased Method, Cost of Production Method, Simulated Exchange Value Method, Resource Rent Method, Prices from similar markets, Final Consumption Method and Mixed Contribution Method.…”

“…Existing experience in RRCES accounting includes application of different valuation methods, many of which have been used for valuation of the RRCES provided by the National Parks or other protected areas (Remme et al 2015;Horlings et al 2020;Barton et al 2019, Pelletier et al 2021, Wang et al 2022. Pelletier et al (2021) implement eight different accounting approaches to obtain values for the RRCES in the New South Wales (NSW) National Parks, Australia: Random Utility Method, Activitybased Method, Cost of Production Method, Simulated Exchange Value Method, Resource Rent Method, Prices from similar markets, Final Consumption Method and Mixed Contribution Method. Discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the obtained results, the authors underline the suitability of the group of consumption-based methods for accounting the RRCES from National Parks.…”

“…All these methods require a lot of specific data and surveys. For example, to collect visitation data related to protected areas, 62 000 respondents were interviewed across four states over a period of six years (Pelletier et al 2021). The most existing methods for accounting of CES are very data intensive and needs in situ data and surveys and the results are relevant for the particular site and moment and could be changed significantly sometime later.…”