Effects of the Coastal Park Environment Attributes on Its Admission Fee Charges

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effect of those recognized nature-and-activity-based attributes on the level of park’s admission fee charges using a panel data of 29 coastal recreation parks in Dalian city of China. A total of seven different Hedonic pricing model specifications are used in the estimating process. The results indicate that a numerous attributes have statistically significant effects (α≤ 0.10) on the level of park admission fee charges. In terms of the economic valuation, the marine sightseeing results in the highest value of Marginal Willingness to Pay (MWTP) of $6.4 as its quality rank improves to a designated higher level. As expected that the park congestion has a negative effect on the MWTP (-$0.47) and overall park’s rankings have a positive effect ($0.05) on park’s MWTP. However, many recreation activities accommodated by the park sites exhibit a relatively weak effect on the park entrance fee charges. One possible reason is perhaps owing to the single admission package fee policy adopted by the park management..