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ABSTRACT
In 2017, The New York Times sounded the alarm that ‘the number of [U.S. national] park visitors have reached an unprecedented level, leaving many tourists frustrated and many environmentalists concerned about the toll of overcrowding.’ We address herein the overcrowding issue at Zion National Park in an effort to provide empirical context for upcoming Congressional consideration of entrance fees at national parks under the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act. Zion is the fourth largest of the 63 U.S. national parks encompassing 148 thousand acres and welcoming 4.5 million recreation visits in 2019. We determine from U.S. National Park Service data that severe overcrowding occurs during the summer months of June, July, and August. One way to possibly reduce overcrowding is to increase the price. We estimate that if the entrance fee to Zion was increased from $35.00 per vehicle to $70.00 per vehicle during those months, the number of recreation visits would decrease by more than 18 percent and would result in an acceptable number of recreation visits defined to be what is experienced in May.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 The first director of the National Park Service, from 1917 to 1929, was Stephen T. Mather.
3 We reference 2019 here and below because it is the full year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. For an informed discussion about the post COVID-19 exacerbated overcrowded conditions at the national parks in Utah, USA, see Templeton, Goonan, and Fyall (Citation2021).
4 We thank an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing to us that a visitor to a national park can generate more than one visit to the park under the same entrance fee. An entrance fee to Zion National Park is valid for 7 days, so a visitor can visit the park multiple times, and each visit is recorded in the data.
6 See https://e360.yale.edu/features/greenlock-a-visitor-crush-is-overwhelming-americas-national-parks.
7 Other scholars have suggested pricing policies to discuss various issues related to national parks, but not the issue of overcrowding. See, for example, Mulwa, Kabubo-Mariara, and Nyangena (Citation2018) and Mukanjari, Muchapondwa, and Demeke (Citation2020).
8 See, for example, Walls (Citation2013) on this point for U.S. state parks. Her cogent argument applies equally well to U.S. national parks.
9 This section is based on https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/parks/zion-national-park/park-history-zion-national-park.
11 We thank Bret Meldrum, National Park Service Chief of the Social Science Program, and Christine Williamson, National Park Service Recreation Fee Program Manager, for their assistance during the data collection phase of this study.
12 Data are available from the NPS by year on vehicle entrance fees and per person entrance fees if there is one individual in a vehicle. In recent years, data have become available on motorcycle entrance fees. The literature related to the elasticity of demand for national parks relies on vehicle entrance fees.
13 These are the years for which entrance fee data are available from the NPS.
14 We also considered specifications that included a binary variable for the Great Recession (2008 and 2009) and a binary variable for the events of 911 (2001 and 2002). These variables were not significant at conventional levels, although the 911 variable was generally negative.
15 This Act is Title VIII of Public Law 108-447 dated December 8, 2004. The Act states that fees (called recreation fees) be established on the basis of the following criteria: ‘(1) The amount of the recreation fee shall be commensurate with the benefits and services provided to the visitor. (2) The Secretary shall consider the aggregate effect of recreation fees on recreation users and recreation service providers. (3) The Secretary shall consider comparable fees charged elsewhere and by other public agencies and by nearby private sector operators. (4) The Secretary shall consider the public policy or management objectives served by the recreation fee. (5) The Secretary shall obtain input from the appropriate Recreation Resource Advisory Committee, as provided in section 4(d). (6) The Secretary shall consider such other factors or criteria as determined appropriate by the Secretary.’
16 See https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/fees-at-work.htm. Zion National Park is within a group of larger and more visited national parks that includes Bryce Canyon, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite (USGAO Citation2015).
17 See https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/fees-at-work.htm. Of the 63 national parks, 22 do not charge an entrance fee.
18 The DW statistics suggests that autocorrelation in the December model is indeterminant, although it leans toward no autocorrection. Statistically, we cannot make a claim for or against autocorrelation in the December model. However, based on comments from an anonymous reviewer, we explored the structure of the error terms from the December regression model. Our inspection of the primary data and the error terms suggests that since 2013 there has been a marked increase in recreation visits to Zion National Park in that month, thus creating a smooth increase in the error terms from the model.
19 We also estimated equation (1) using annual data for 1993–2019. The estimated vehicle entrance fee elasticity of demand is -0.1435. These results are available on request from the authors.
20 When Jeff Olson, a National Park Service spokesman, was asked by Andrew Flowers in a 2016 interview (as reported in ‘The National Parks Have Never Been More Popular’ which appeared on the FiveThirtyEight website): ‘What explains this [post 2013] burst in popularity of the national parks?’, Olson answered, ‘You mean besides the price of gas?’
21 Timmons (Citation2019) discusses with respect to Zion National Park not only the aesthetic losses from overcrowding but also the environment damages from overcrowding.
22 See Interagency Visitor Use Management Council (Citation2019).
23 Our choice to use the month of May as an illustrative point of reference is not completely arbitrary. From , May is the month that precedes the visually apparent peak months of June through August. In practice, our empirical analysis could be used to determine the entrance fee increase necessary to achieve any predefined level of recreation visits.
24 A doubling of the vehicle entrance fee to Zion is not unprecedented. In nominal terms, the fee went from $5 to $10 in 1998, and it went from $10 to $20 in 2000. Of course, our numerical finding of doubling the vehicle entrance price in June, July, and August is based on our choice of the month of May to illustrate the point that the overcrowding at Zion National Park can be curbed through a seasonal price increase. However, although not addressed in the literature, modifications to an entrance fee increase could be made for seniors or lower-income individuals, although both groups would need to be identified in a respectful manner such as the use of a specific park pass for lower-income individuals or for seniors who do not have an annual pass.
25 Seasonal pricing of outdoor recreation or park activities is certainly not a new concept as discussed by Wilman (Citation1988) and Chase et al. (Citation1998), but it has yet to be applied to any U.S. national park.
27 For example, in Zion National Park a reservation system to purchase advance shuttle tickets was initiated from mid-May through the end of August 2021.
28 The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act authorizes certain agencies, including the NPS, to charge and collect recreation fees on federal recreational lands and waters, and to retain the collected fees primarily for on-site improvements. See https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10151.pdf.
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