Accounting for ethnicity in recreation demand: A flexible count data approach

We examine ethnicity and individual trip taking behavior associated with natural resource based recreation in the Florida Keys. We estimate trip demand using the travel cost method. We then extend this model with a varying parameter adaptation to test the congruency of demand and economic value across white and Hispanic user subgroups. Our findings indicate significant differences in price response leading to divergent per-trip consumer surplus and price elasticity between these two groups. These differences raise important distribution and equity concerns with respect to the possible future use of pricing policies like user fees.