ABSTRACT Michigan’s Northern Lower Peninsula supports a reintroduced elk herd of around 1,300 animals, centered in Pigeon River Country and Atlanta State Forests. These public lands are popular for visitors to engage in a variety of outdoor recreation activities, with some activities such as elk viewing and elk hunting created by the presence of elk. The first essay examines the demand for the elk hunting by implementing a discrete choice experiment among elk lottery applicants. We use the choice experiment results to model the number of applicants, revenue, and elasticity of applicants at varying application fee levels under different program attributes seen in other state elk hunting lottery systems. Applicants were found to have very inelastic demand across all scenarios. Auctioning tags for fundraising and increasing the license fee reduces lottery demand at all application fee levels, while implementing a dedicated fund increases demand. To illustrate the strong demand for hunting elk in Michigan, the agency could double the application fee and raise 95% more application revenue while only losing 2.3% of the applicants. The second essay examines preferences of various visitors to the Michigan elk range by using a discrete choice experiment to assess a preferences and willingness to drive further to experience elk-related attributes. We find that the average visitor to the Michigan elk range has a positive preference associated with experiencing elk-related attributes, but the results indicate significant variation in respondents’ preferences. To analyze this variation, visitors are segmented by primary activity. Unsurprisingly, visitors engaging in wildlife-related activities such as wildlife viewing exhibit the strongest preferences associated with experiencing elk related attributes, while those engaging in water-related activities had lower preference for elk viewing attribute. Importantly though, all groups indicated a positive willingness to drive to experience elk-related attributes
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