Application of the travel cost method to measure the urban forest park's recreational value with first-visit satisfaction taken into account.

This study is the first to assess the recreation benefit by incorporating the factor of first-visit satisfaction into different recreation demand models, including linear travel-cost-method model, the truncated Poisson recreation demand estimation model, the negative binomial regression model, and corrected Cobb-Douglas linear cost function model. The variables involved in the assessment include travel cost, personal socio-economic characteristics, travel time, and so on. Our empirical results showed that the total travel cost, total travel time and some socio-economic characteristic variables would affect the recreation demand for Da-an Forest Park. It is also showed that the factor of first-visit satisfaction turned out to be a significant factor that influences the demand function in the linear model, the truncated Poisson recreation demand estimation model, and the negative binomial regression model. The results of the overall model fitness tests indicated that the incorporation of first-visit satisfaction in the recreation demand models effectively boosts model fitness. Our empirical results also showed that the TCM predicts the consumer surplus from the demand function to be higher than the corrected Cobb-Douglas linear expenditure travel function. By the recreation benefit indices, we also suggested the recreation economic benefit and the total recreation benefit of each day for Da-an Forest Park. It is expected that the findings from this research should serve as a useful reference in the making of urban park management policies for competent authorities in the future.