Estimating Recreational Benefits and Environmental Effects for the Amenities of Flowers Industry

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Tien-Wei highway garden is the biggest cultivated land area for flowers (30.27%, in 2007) in Taiwan, which provided both public goods and positive externalities, such as the amenity value of the landscape, biological diversity, cultural heritage, rural lifestyle and economic activity contributing social welfares to rural economy. The amenity of flower industry attracts many tourists and generates recreational benefits, which cannot be assessed by market price directly. This research adopts the nonmarket goods valuation method, travel cost method (TCM), to measure the benefits from tourists’ demand function. In addition, the environmental quality will influence the tourist’s decision to choose the recreation site, which is also an important determinant of demand function and will be introduced into demand model. The empirical results of this research demonstrate that the average consumer surplus (CS) for demand model containing quality variables is NT$7,770. The average consumer surplus without containing quality variables in the demand model is NT$7,741, and the average benefits of environmental quality for tourist is NT29.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• [ABSTRACT]
• Introduction
• Environmental Attitude and Environment Quality
• TCM and Recreational Benefits
• Count Data Model
• Results
• Analysis of Tourists’ Preferences for Environmental Quality
• Estimating Recreational Benefits and Environmental Effects
• Discussion and Conclusions
• Reference