Valuing beach recreation across a regional area: The Great Barrier Reef in Australia

The focus of the research reported in this paper has been to estimate recreation values for beaches over approximately 1,400 km (km) of coastline along the Queensland coast. The study is notable at an international level because it assesses recreation values to a general type of recreation asset rather than to a specific site, and because it focuses on the values of the local resident population. Negative binomial models have been used to estimate both the visit rate and recreation values associated with beach visits in different regional areas. The value of a single beach visit was estimated per person at $35.09, which extrapolates to $587.3 million in beach recreation values per annum. These values are likely to be conservative because opportunity costs incurred to live closer to the beach (e.g. housing premiums) have not been assessed. Contingent behaviour models were used to estimate the values of potential declines in water quality, with marginal effects assessed at $1.30 per recreation trip to avoid each 1% decline in water quality.