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Gone to the Beach — Using GIS to infer how people value different beaches for salt water recreation.
Citation:
Bousquin, J., N. Merrill, S. Lyon, AND M. Mazzotta. Gone to the Beach — Using GIS to infer how people value different beaches for salt water recreation. FOSS4G, Boston, MA, August 14 - 19, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
We are currently developing a recreational demand model, based on visitation data and beach characteristics, that will allow decision makers to predict the benefits of different levels of water quality improvement. An important part of that model is the time required for potential recreation participants to get to different beaches. This presentation will describe different ways to estimate travel times and the advantages/disadvantages for our particular application. It will go on to outline how freely available population data can be used with these calculated travel times to start to model demand for salt water recreation at different beaches. Once expected demand is mapped it can be compared to actual visitation data to show how other beach characteristics, such as water quality, influence salt water recreation.
Description:
Estimating the non-market value of beaches for saltwater recreation is complex. An individual’s preference for a beach depends on their perception of beach characteristics. When choosing one beach over another, an individual balances these personal preferences with any additional costs including travel time and/or fees to access the beach. This trade-off can be used to infer how people value different beach characteristics; especially when beaches are free to the public, beach value estimates rely heavily on accurate travel times. A current case study focused on public access on Cape Cod, MA will be used to demonstrate how travel costs can be used to determine the service area of different beaches, and model expected use of those beaches based on demographics. We will describe several of the transportation networks and route services available and compare a few based on their ability to meet our specific requirements of scale and seasonal travel time accuracy.