Economics Research Institute Study Paper
Utah State University Department of Economics
Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact the Institutional Repository Librarian at email@example.com.
Total and use-related willingness to pay for wilderness designation and for maintaining currently proposed wilderness areas in open-access multiple use was determined for rural and urban residents of Utah using dichotomous choice contingent valuation. The hypothesis that the wilderness controversy is a rural/urban issue was only partially borne out. Supporters and opponents of wilderness designation appeared to have similar mean WTP estimates for both total and use values; however, a higher proportion of rural residents were opposed to wilderness designation. Comparisons of total values suggested that the sample-weighted WTP of opponents to wilderness was greater than the weighted WTP of supporters, although results were statistically weak. Sample-weighted use values for urban respondents were larger for supporters than opponents, while the opposite was true for rural respondents. Finally, a log-linear estimation procedure was tested and was found to yield theoretically inconsistent results.
Keith, John E.; Fawson, Christopher; and Johnson, Van, "Wilderness Designation in Utah: Urban and Rural Willingness to Pay" (1996). Economic Research Institute Study Papers. Paper 90.