An Analysis of Congestion Measures and Heterogeneous Angler Preferences in a Random Utility Model of Recreational Fishing

The potential importance ofcongestion effects on the management andrationing of recreational facilities andservices in the presence of heterogeneouspreferences were highlighted nearly twenty-fiveyears ago by Freeman and Haveman (1977). Whilethere have been a number of theoretical modelsextending and expanding upon this work(McConnell 1988; Anderson 1993), empiricalresearch evaluating such impacts is limited. Evidence of the potential impacts of congestionon resource usage is of obvious importance,especially for natural resource managers whounderstand that congestion can be an effectiverationing device and because users likelydiffer in both their preferences for use andaversion to congestion. It is the objective ofthis research to compare alternative measuresof congestion for explaining site choice withina random utility modeling framework. Thecongestion measures differ with respect to thetime horizon over which they are assumed to beformulated and the measure of central tendencyused to represent them. Furthermore, weinvestigate how the response to thesecongestion measures may differ across twodistinct angler types and the implications ofthose differences on the per trip willingnessto pay for stock enhancement. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004