OUTDOOR RECREATION, HEDONIC PRICES AND THE DEMAND FOR SOLITUDE: A NOTE

A number of economists have examined the effects of solitude (or its inverse, congestion) on outdoor recreation demand. For example, McConnell ( 1977) and Allen and Stevens ( 1979) found that the willingness to pay and consumer surplus of users of outdoor recreation facilities were related to disruptions in solitude. These studies did not, however, identify a demand schedule for solitude. In the absence of this information, the benefits of nonmarginal changes in solitude cannot be determined. In this note we apply the theory of hedonic prices to specify a demand function for solitude. Cross-sectional data of campers in Western Massachusetts were used to estimate a set of implicit marginal prices and to derive the demand function . The benefits associated with nonmarginal increases in solitude were then obtained by integrating over the estimated demand function . Our results are tentativeindeed, the primary purpose of this note is to stimulate discussion and interest in the use of the hedonic technique .