Recreational Use of Land in the United States
RECREATIONAL RESOURCES AND HUMAN REQUIREMENTS
6. ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF RECREATION
Since it costs moneysomebody's moneyto provide recreation and the facilities for it; since such provision has certain direct and indirect economic results along with social results; since it is enlightening at least to explore the possibility that public provision of certain kinds of recreation is economically justified, the following questions, all economic in nature, may be reasonably propounded:
1. Just what is the place and the importance of recreation in the modern economic picture?
2. What is the total cost of providing Americans with leisure-time occupation?
3. What desirable stimuli, if any, are given to business by the pursuit of recreation, and more specifically by governmental provision of opportunity for recreation?
4. What effect does the establishment of parks have on business property values and employment?
5. To what extent does the meeting of recreational demands provide employment?
6. To what extent does the public provision of recreational facilities affect other public expenditures, such as for jails, insane asylums, hospitals, etc.?
7. What part of the total cost of providing recreation is properly a public responsibility?
8. How is the public to bear its share of the cost of (a) selecting, (b) acquiring, (c) developing, and (d) operating recreational facilities?
9. What costs may the user of publicly owned recreational facilities be expected to bear?
10. What is the extent and importance of private enterprise in recreational economy?
Some of these questions, and others that arise out of them, can be answered rather positively and surely; for others the information available is incomplete, difficult to evaluate, and the answers must at best be approximations of the truth; some must at present rest almost completely on opinion.