1.0 INTRODUCTION Nowadays people spend more to leisure time and recreation which growths the value of public recreational resources. For instance, people enjoy by choosing beaches for snorkeling, mountains for climbing and lakes for fishing.
One of public recreational that usually provide sightseeing, picnicking, and exercise for tourists and natives is national parks. National parks providing all the recreational purposes or access to amenities through own economic values.For instance, park managers can getting an idea of how valuable the park is based on a decision about how much to invest on the facilities and maintenance of the park or how much to spend on amenity improvement (Sohngen 2000). In addition, park managers could also consider charging a suitable entrance fee for the protection of these recreational resources based on the value of parks (Tang, T., 2009).
That is very difficult to value recreation such as national parks by using traditional economic measures because the beauty scenery of environment is not normally priced in markets. Some people may think these public goods have little value to market value, so they could ignored the environmental value. Nevertheless these public resources which act as a drive stimulus for the economy and source of social welfare are very important to visitors (Tang, T., 2009). However, we can evaluate market goods by analyzing the quantities and prices in the market but we cannot evaluate the non-market goods in the same way. Hence, non-market valuation methods estimating the monetary value of public goods are widely used to come out the solution of the problem (Tang, T. 2009).?3.
0 TRAVEL COST METHOD Travel cost method is valuation method for ecosystem services, mainly used to estimate the recreational value of sites. The main concept is transport costs and the opportunity costs of the time spent travelling to a recreational site are used as a represent the price of that site (Grunigen, 2016). The principle of the method is recognition that users pay an implicit price by spend time and money to take trips to these areas for recreation (Valuing the Protection, n.d.). Other than that, travel cost method estimated the recreational value of a natural site by relating demand (number of site visits) to its price (transport costs and opportunity costs of time used). Most travel cost use observed quantity data of visit but price and travel cost data are constructed by researcher using observed data on distance and conventions which adapt to distance cost (Common, M., Bull, T.
& Stoeckl, N., 1999). The demand function is used to calculate the consumer surplus in order to estimate the economic benefits of the site. Travel cost method is based on revealed preferences which is not stated preferences, benefit which is not costs and use value (not non-use values). Besides that, travel cost method can be used to estimate the economic such as benefits of the current use, losses by eliminating a site and benefits or costs of changing the quality of a site. The factors that influence a person’s decision about where or how frequent to travel will be present as values of ecosystem services (Valuing the Protection, n.
d.). For example, a space recreation used for exercising would influence a person decision either how frequently visiting the recreational park. Below will be discuss about the steps of analysis will be made and there are three travel cost method approaches which are zonal travel cost method, individual travel cost method and random utility travel cost method.
Besides that, it also discuss about problem in application of travel cost method and limitation of travel cost method. ?3.1 STEPS OF ANALYSIS The travel cost method is connected by gathering data on the quantity of visits to the site from different distances. That is because the travel and time costs will increase with distance and this information allows the researcher to calculate the number of visits purchased at different prices, the demand function and the consumer surplus or economic benefits for the recreational services of the site.
3.2 EMPIRICAL APPROACHESTravel cost method can only measure ‘use values’. In travel cost method there are three approaches which are:3.2.1 Zonal Travel Cost Method (zTCM) The Zonal TCM is the first and easiest approach. It mostly using secondary data with basic information gathered from visitors.
It is limited to evaluating the estimation of recreational services of all site. Besides that, change in quality of recreation site or other factors that may necessary to be value cannot easily value. Describe zones near the site like concentric circles or geographical divisions (e.
g. counties). The 3 2 1collection data on number of visitors from each zone made in the most recent year. 3.2.
2 Individual Travel Cost Method (iTCM) The Individual TCM is like to the zTCM however uses survey data from individuals’ visitors (as opposed to normal information from each zone) to estimate the trip generation function. iTCM requires more information and more difficult analysis, but is more precise.3.
2.2 Random Utility Travel Cost Method (ruTCM)The Random Utility TCM expect that people will pick the site that they prefer toward out of all sites for example they will consider between site quality and price of travel to site. All possible site that a visitors could select and the quality characteristics also travel costs to each site is necessary data in this method. Through ruTCM, the researcher can predict the decision to go recreational park or not and the variables figure out which site is chosen and also the info collected on site quality allows the value of changes in quality to be assessed.3.4 PROBLEM IN APPLICATION OF TRAVEL COST METHODOne of are type of traveler, many sites are visited by people on numerous destination trips like on holiday include local travel that could undervalue. Then, people come to pass by site which including all travel costs would be inappropriate.
The interruption of these types of visitors make assumptions which the travel costs can be simply calculated Christie, M. (n.d.).Clawson and Knetsch carried out some of the real problems which arise when using the travel cost method to make empirical estimates. Budget and time constraints is also considered in demand to visit a site not only depend on the distance from the point of origin. For the travel time, the opportunity cost of time is the value of person activity that may involve instead of spending time on a recreational trip such as persons are unable to choose between work and leisure that means it is not possible to value the time spent on the trip in monetary terms as an opportunity cost. One of the problems which arises in estimating the cost of travel is multi-purpose trips where no objective of the trip.
In such circumstances, the difficulty rely in determining what part of the estimated cost of travel should be given to the specific site under study. Therefore, it is need to mention there is no commonly accepted solution to this problem but using only the cost of travel from the stop earlier to the site in question (Smith, 1971).Lastly is site quality and congestion. Factor influencing individual choice destination is site quality but congestion is a problem that affects the quality of visit. Congestion occur at the site when the number of visitors exceed which cannot access and the area of site crowded with visitors.
It has been shown that in cases of congestion, demand is undervalued and the travel cost method gives an approximation of consumer surplus below true value (Wetzel 1977).3.5 LIMITATIONS Every method have their own limitation.
For the travel cost method also have the limitations. In measure the recreational quality related to environmental quality can be challenging because of normal travel cost approaches used current conditions material that is not gains or losses from predictable differences in resource surroundings. Besides that, travel cost approaches not suited for sited near large population center where many visitations may be from “origin zones’ that are close to one another (Valuation method, n.d.
) because of necessities to be enough difference between distances traveled to affect travel costs and for changes in travel costs to interrupt the number of trips made. Besides that, the travel cost method is narrow in its range of application because it requires user contribution which environmental features and roles that users of the site do not find valuable to assign as values. Thus, the sites that have unique qualities will be undervalued by non-users.4.0 CONCLUSION In conclusion, there are a several of methods available to value environmental goods and services and the different methods will be suited to different goods and different elements of value. Therefore, travel cost method is under revealed preference method which is non-market goods.
In addition, the approach derived demand curve from data on actual travel cost and use is the types of values estimated. The application of travel cost method is recreation and the requirement of data need to carried out survey to collect monetary and time costs of travel to destination and distance traveled. Each method have their own limitation and the limitation of travel cost method is limited to recreational benefits, hard to use when trips are multi-destinations.
