William E. Martin

Problems and Solutions in Estimating the Demand for and Value of Rural Outdoor Recreation

An improved methodology for estimating demand functions for outdoor recreation and evaluating the outdoor recreation resource by use classification is presented. The illustrative framework is a large-scale empirical study of all outdoor recreation activities in all areas of Arizona. The use of the improved procedures produces estimates of resource values which are much larger than in most previous studies and which are about the size of estimates of gross variable expenditures. It is argued that the time has come to relax the search for improved estimating methodology and concentrate on interpretation of the estimates in studies of resource allocations.

Socioeconomic Behavior of Cattle Ranchers, with Implications for Rural Community Development in the West

This paper extends the argument that cattle ranching and ranchers can be better understood by viewing the ranch resource as generating both production and consumption outputs. It was found that nonmonetary outputs of ranch ownership are the most significant factors in explaining high sale prices of Arizona ranches. Land fundamentalism, rural fundamentalism, and conspicuous consumption/speculative attitudes are the most important of these consumption outputs. The analysis suggests that small town viability and growth in the arid Southwest, and possibly in the West as a whole, may be more likely to occur if rural development policies are not predicated on the economic impact of surrounding ranches.

Relating Ranch Prices and Grazing Permit Values to Ranch Productivity

Costs and returns research on western cattle ranches invariably shows low or negative net returns. Yet ranch sale values, including the sale values of public grazing permits, remain at high levels. There appears to be confusion in either the facts or their evaluation. This confusion carries over into public-grazing-fee policy. The authors offer the hypothesis that not all outputs produced by an investment in a cattle ranch have been included in previous conventional analyses. Since these additional outputs are as much a part of the return on investment as is the output beef, they should be considered in evaluating use fees on public lands. Measurement of these extra marginal value products not directly associated with the utilization of grass is difficult. Therefore, the total MVP of the bundle of resources is estimated by the use of regression analysis with information on actual ranch sales as data. These estimates, when compared with data from other sources, give insights into the relative importance of several motives for purchasing a ranch. A policy conclusion is that change to a bidding procedure in setting use fees would be desirable.

Water price as a policy variable in managing urban water use: Tucson, Arizona

An informal analysis of readily available time series data relevant to urban water use in Tucson, Arizona, is presented as an illustration of how a management-oriented empirical analysis, structured with general knowledge of the results of formal econometric studies, can produce useful insights for making applied price policy. Precise estimates of urban water demand price and income elasticities are not required in order to achieve conservation-oriented goals. In the Tucson experience, annual water price increases equal to the rate of inflation plus approximately the rate of change in real per capita income would have been necessary just to maintain constant rather than increasing water use. Given the actual price policy, it is not surprising that Tucson has not achieved its mandated conservation goal.

Economic Value of Lake Mead Fishery

Abstract Water management in the Colorado River system has affected fish productivity adversely in Lake Mead. Knowledge of the economic value of the fishery would be useful in analyzing programs to improve the fishery. Management agencies currently are especially interested in the largemouth bass fishery. Value is defined in terms of consumers surplus. A fishing day is any portion of a day that an individual fished in Lake Mead. The mean value per fishing day is estimated as about

Structure of Demand for Outdoor Recreation

60 for general fishermen and

Returns to Public Irrigation Development and the Concomitant Costs of Commodity Programs

100 for largemouth bass club members. The total annual value of the fishery is estimated as

Evolving Water Institutions in an Urbanizing West: Discussion

69 million, 15 percent of which is directly attributable to largemouth bass club members.

Economies of Size and the 160-Acre Limitation: Fact and Fancy

This paper reports an attempt to develop and apply a methodology to analyze the structure of demand for outdoor recreation as a basis for estimating future demand. A structural analysis of present participants in outdoor recreation is designed to define groups of outdoor recreators with similar socioeconomic and recreation use characteristics. The object is to estimate future recreation demands based upon the numbers of present recreators found in each defined group and upon projections of future socioeconomic conditions; that is, to carefully examine the socioeconomic variables that shift the demand schedules for outdoor recreation activity and to show how this greater knowledge of the shifter variables may be used. It is found that the important shifter variable for most individuals is not among the easily measured and predicted variables such as income, age and education, but is simply that variable always included in conceptual demand functions but rarely measured-tastes and preferences. The authors realize that this finding is not new. The importance of tastes and preferences has been recognized in the literature for many decades. Yet a review of studies designed to estimate empirical demand functions for outdoor recreational activities shows researchers still hoping, to little avail, that the easily measured shifter variables will prove significant. Thus, in this paper the authors take a different approach. First, the current structure of recreation demand is defined in terms of groups of people having similar tastes and preferences. While little can be projected about the actual change in the structure of preferences that will in fact occur and will be the important causal variable in shifting recreation demand, recreation elasticities are computed for use in alternative scenarios which give insights into the changing structure of recreation demand. A stratified random sample of all households in Arizona provides the data set used to illustrate the procedure.

Effects of Federal Income Taxes on Cattle-Ranch Prices

Development of agriculture, and associated agricultural problems, have had a prominent place in congressional deliberations virtually throughout the history of the United States (Benedict). Early policy stressed land development, and the Reclamation Act of 1902 was in such spirit. It was An Act Appropriating the receipts from the sale and disposal of public lands in certain States and Territories to the construction of irrigation works for the reclamation of arid lands. With later modifications of policy to provide greater sources of income for works construction, Congress continues to support the Bureau of Reclamations water development, output increasing activities. Yet, since 1929, with time out for war, the federal government also has effected commodity programs designed to reduce the supply of major agricultural commodities so as to maintain product prices at levels that would be above the market price in a free and reasonably normal market situation(Benedict, p. 517). Such a situation would tend to strike most economists as peculiar (inefficient). Howe and Easter estimated the annual costs of commodity programs directly related to reclamation irrigation in the range of