Environmental diversity in recreational choice modelling

Monetary Valuation of Urban Forest Attributes in Highly Developed Urban Environments: An Experimental Study Using a Conjoint Choice Model

“…This might be associated with the various characteristics of trees such as tree shape, foliage color, foliage shape, bark color, seasonal variation, and the sense of safety. The results of this study were consistent with the findings of previous studies that reported a preference for a spreading shape over more conical forms [30,[73][74][75][76][77][78], coarse foliage (i.e., broadleaved trees) over fine foliage (i.e., conifers) [61,78], bright bark color over dark bark color [78], variety of colors in a forest over simple colors [54,[79][80][81] and seasonal variation over no variation [77,82,83]. Often, people perceive conifer forests in relation to the terms "artificial", "man-made", "darkness", "impermeable", "repelling", "uniform", "monotony", "young trees," and "mushrooms," whereas broadleaved forests are perceived in relation to the terms "native", "natural," "light diverse colors", "permeable", "inviting", "individual", "diversity", "old trees", and "flowers" [84].…”

“…However, a number of studies have reported the opposite results, which suggests a greater preference of people for sloping trails in Spain (e.g., [30]), Denmark (e.g., [109]), and elsewhere (e.g., [61,63]). Thus, the preference for flat trails identified in this study should not be overgeneralized.…”

“…Another possible explanation for peoples' preferences for broadleaved forest over coniferous forest is the "sense of safety" with broadleaved forest associated with "visual penetration", "visibility", and "openness" [31,[86][87][88][89][90][91]. Many studies have reported that the perception of safety is strongly related to landscape preferences (e.g., [30,[92][93][94][95][96]). The thick foliage of coniferous trees could obstruct view (i.e., low visual penetration) and evoke fear or a sense of being unsafe in visitors to urban forests (e.g., [93,94]).…”

“…Because of these known benefits, we adopted the CE approach to investigate the preferences of urban dwellers for the attributes of urban forests. In fact, this approach has been effectively used in investigating preferences or values of non-market public goods (e.g., urban forests, water, ecosystem services, and environmental diversity) in urban forest studies or related areas [25,30,[35][36][37][38][39]44].…”

Recreation demand analysis of sensitive natural areas from an on-site survey

“…We set a share equal to 1/3 of the most commonly used hourly wage rate (ENGLIN and SHONKWILER, 1995;PARSONS, 2003;PHANEUF and SMITH, 2005;BUJOSA BESTARD and RIERA FONT, 2009). For simplicity, we did not consider time spent on the recreation site and travel time on foot or bicycle as costly 11 (MCCONNELL, 1985).…”