Tourism for surf and marsh fishing in coastal Louisiana: effects of site closure, travel cost decrease, and entrance fee increase

ABSTRACT

We apply the generalised corner solution model to understand recreational behaviour for surf and marsh fishing trips to six sites in coastal Louisiana. Results showed statistically significant effects of individual’s demographic characteristics and site physical and environmental characteristics. The closure of the three most used recreational sites (Grand Isle, Elmer’s Island, and Port Fourchon) caused a welfare loss in an amount ranging from $592 to $2,101 per traveller per year. The welfare impact of the reduction in travel cost was $390 per traveller per year. An increase in the recreational site entrance fee caused welfare losses. This study has implications for site closure and welfare losses, such as those that resulted from the Deep Horizon Oil Spill that closed many Louisiana coastal recreational sites for about one year (May 7, 2010 to June 15, 2011) and the Elmer’s Island beaches that were temporarily restricted for fishing access during the Caminada Headland restoration project construction in 2016.

KEYWORDS:

• Generalized corner solution model
• wetland
• recreation demand
• surf and marsh fishing
• site closure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Krishna P. Paudel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9780-5520

Notes

1 For more information, see the report at: http://asafishing.org/uploads/2011_ASASportfishing_in_America_Report_January_2013.pdf

2 See ‘Elmer’s Island Coastal Preference Survey Report (http://nsgl.gso.uri.edu/lsu/lsus03002.pdf)’ for more detail.

3 These sites are chosen and combined based on how visitors choose locations for surf and marsh fishing in Louisiana. We assume that visitors consider all six sites in their decisions and no other sites. If that is not the case, there will be some potential bias in the model parameter estimations. Interested readers are referred to other papers which introduce this issue (Parsons et al. 1999; Peters et al. 1995; Hicks and Strand 2000; Li et al. 2015; and Thiene et al. 2017).

4 The national average automobile driving cost, including ownership costs (insurance, license, registration, taxes, and depreciation), in addition to operating costs (gas & oil, maintenance, and tires), as reported by the American Automobile Association (AAA).

5 It is certainly reasonable to argue that the opportunity cost of time is less than the wage rate (Haab and McConnell 2002). Our sample wage rate is higher than the state average rate. However, increasing the wage rate would increase welfare loss (in the event of site closure) or decrease welfare loss (if travel cost decreases).

6 In a recent paper by Ghimire et al. (2017), the authors indicate that the combination of size and closeness are the most preferred freshwater amenity characteristics for recreation visitors in the United States. These visitors did not give priority to wildlife size. We believe this result may be true for our group of recreationists as well.

7 Annual average Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all urban consumers was used to adjust these numbers to 2016 dollars.