The Value of Leisure Time: A Contingent Rating Approach

In this paper, we apply the contingent rating method to the problem of estimating a value for leisure time. This is an important component of recreation demand models. A tradition in this literature has been to use some fixed percentage of the wage rate as the value of time. However, time values are likely to vary across individuals to a greater extent than this suggests, whilst for a given individual time is differently valued according to how it is spent. Empirical results show that there is indeed a wide variation in leisure time values.