The objectives of this dissertation are to measure the monetary value of public Great Lakes beaches, then to measure the monetary value and economic impacts of water quality improvements to Great Lakes beaches. The first essay applied all trip data from a general population survey to Michigan adults to estimate the economic value of the public Great Lakes beaches. We found that on average a Michigan resident took 3.8 trips to the Great Lakes beaches in the summer of 2011. The seasonal value of access to a public Great Lakes beach ranged from $24.74 to $28.07 per person per trip, which would be reduced to two-thirds of the value if we only used single day trip data. To incorporate water quality attributes, Essay 2 combined trip data (RP) and choice experiment data (SP) to estimate the economic benefits from water quality changes at Great Lakes beaches in Michigan. We first applied a scaling approach to jointly estimate the parameters of attributes in both RP and SP data sets under a unified RUM framework. Different model specifications for common preferences across the data types were tested. The common preference test between the RP and SP data was consistently rejected. Our results provided empirical evidences that the scaling approach is not sufficient to account for differences in the amount of unexplained variance when using RP and SP data together in some applications. With some caveats, we then applied the calibration of SP to RP approach to measure the change in consumer surplus in response to two types of water quality scenarios. We found that water quality improvement impacts Huron south most, Michigan south least; water quality degradation impacts Lake Michigan most, Huron south least. To measure the economic impacts of Great Lakes beaches, the third essay applied a visitor spending survey to estimate Michigan beachgoers’ spending to Great Lakes beaches. An on-site recruitment of beachgoers was conducted at three public beaches in Michigan in 2014. Intercepted beachgoers were asked to take a web survey about their beach activities and their spending of the visits. A sample selection model was used to address potential nonresponse bias problem in the spending data. We found the regional spending of an average beachgoer to Great Lakes beaches ranged from $35.92 to $248.80 in 2014 dollars. Essay 4 integrated the recreation demand system from Essay 2 and spending analysis from Essay 3 to estimate regional variations in economic impacts from trips to Great Lakes beaches in Michigan. We found that the spending by all Michigan beachgoers living in the Lower Peninsula had a total economic impact of direct sales within a region that ranged from $425.87 million to $1,724.1 million per season in 2014 dollars.
Read
