The Recreational Value of the Baltic Sea Coast: A Spatially Explicit Site Choice Model Accounting for Environmental Conditions

The coast plays a significant recreational role in the nine countries around the Baltic Sea. More than 70% of the population of these countries visit the coast, representing some 80 million recreational visits annually. Understanding the values associated with coastal recreation, and the potential welfare changes resulting from improvements in the state of environmental and infrastructure conditions of the Baltic Sea coast is important for marine environment management in the region. We estimate a spatially explicit travel cost model for Baltic coast recreation to assess the welfare of accessing individual sites, identify recreational hot spots and simulate the welfare changes resulting from improvements in environmental and infrastructure conditions. The total benefits associated with Baltic Sea coast-based recreation amount to 27.5 billion EUR per year with significant variation across sites. Improving water quality and infrastructure boost the recreational value by nearly 6.2 billion EUR, an increase of about a fifth of the existing recreational benefits.