Valuing the loss in access: An institutional and welfare analysis of rock climbing on United States public lands

Motivation for this research is based on a trend in public land management to restrict rock climbing access. Two recent cases involve the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) proposal to ration climbing in USFS wilderness areas, and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's initiative to restrict climbing access at Hueco Tanks. The overriding objective of this research is to estimate economic losses to climbers due to changes in institutional rules for climbing access on U.S. public lands.;An institutional analysis is presented in Chapter 2 to determine if the USFS is restricted in its ability to make new access rules for climbing. Based on a review of federal policies, a case can be made that climbers have standing for benefit-cost analysis (BCA). According to Executive Order 12866, a BCA must be conducted on all major federal regulations (an annual effect on the economy of ;In Chapter 3, a repeated-discrete choice random utility model is used to determine whether economic losses to climbers, resulting from the USFS proposal, exceed ;In 1998 Texas Parks and Wildlife Department restricted recreational access at Hueco Tanks due to conflicts between rock climbing and rock art preservation. In Chapter 4, the economic losses to climbers due to restricted access at Hueco Tanks are estimated using count data regression models by pooling revealed preference (RP) and stated preference (SP) trip data. A validity test is conducted using data from surveys implemented both before and after the policy change. Results indicate that methods of pooling RP and SP data show promise as a policy tool. In addition, RP and SP trip data are jointly estimated in a seemingly unrelated Poisson regression model (SUPREME). Results show that a SUPREME is an appropriate method for combining SP and RP data.