Accounting for baseline individual and site characteristics when estimating recreational demand for specialized activities

This article develops a demand model of recreational steelhead fishing to estimate how changes in catch rates and the percentage of catch of wild (vs. hatchery) origin influence angler welfare. Demand models of recreational fishing often rely on discrete choice experiments that are centered on the overall average attribute levels experienced within a fishery. In contrast, many recreational fisheries are characterized by heterogeneous anglers facing heterogeneous consideration sets and attribute levels experienced at given sites. Within the context of the steelhead fishery of Washington State, USA, we conducted a discrete choice experiment that closely mirrored the actual levels of catch rates experienced and locations used by individuals. The experiment varied catch rates and the percentage of steelhead that were of wild (vs. hatchery) origin. Estimated mean willingness-to-pay for a change in catch rates was an order of magnitude larger than mean willingness-to-pay for proportional changes in the percent of steelhead catch that was wild, indicating that catch rates were the primary determinant of behavior. The effects of both attributes depended on the catch- and location-specific baselines experienced by anglers.