Supplementary Exercises > Measuring Environmental Benefits

Measuring the value of a park

A state park currently charges no admission fee and is visited by 582 people each day. A researcher has interviewed a sample of the visitors and has concluded that they come from 6 geographic zones. She has collected the following data, where “Travel Cost” is the round-trip transportation cost of visiting the park:

ZoneTravel CostPopulation
Visitors
1$5 300 30
2$1090072
3$152000120
4$205000200
5$258000160
6$3020000

It is also known that the total number of visits to the park (including people from all zones) is given by an equation of the form: P=A-B*Q, where P is the admission fee, Q is the number of visitors, and A and B are constants.

  1. Please calculate the number of people who would visit the park if a $5 admission fee were imposed.
  2. Use your result from (1) to calculate the daily value of the park.

When you're done, you can check your work via the link below:
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Peter J Wilcoxen, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University
Revised 05/10/2006