Valuation of Cultural and Natural Resources in North Cascades National Park

Abstract

We present the results of a new, tournament-style design of a contingent choice survey about management options at North Cascades National Park (NCNP). In our tournament-style survey, each respondent explicitly ranks several sets of scenarios and, in addition, several other rankings are implicit. Inclusion of the implicit rankings leads to some differences in coefficient estimates but almost no differences in valuation measures. This suggests that the tournament-style format can increase the efficiency of estimates, although further investigation is needed. We find strong evidence of nonuse values for both cultural and natural resource protection; indeed, nonuse values seem to dominate preferences even for those who have visited NCNP. We further find that respondents in general seem to value the protection of natural resources more than the protection of cultural resources, although both are valuable.