The Influence of Site Design and Resource Conditions on Outdoor Recreation Demand: A Mountain Biking Case Study (Report) (Case Study‪)‬

Outdoor recreation consumers create the demand for managed recreation resources and facilities. Under the economic assumption of rationality, a consumer when making the decision to engage in a particular activity evaluates all the potential recreation sites (Bockstael, Hanemann, & Kling, 1987). Ultimately, the consumer considers the different site characteristics and attributes offered at the alternatives with the final choice being the one that maximizes utility (Hensher, Rose, & Greene, 2005). Resource managers must be aware of how consumers judge the resource conditions of the sites if managers are to ensure users receive the desired on-site recreation experiences. More specifically, resource managers need to be aware of how a site's resource conditions will affect the demand for those sites. While this type of information would be ideal for resource managers and analysts, appropriately measuring and accounting for dynamic site characteristics as well as the behavioral aspects that produce the latent utility is often a difficult task (Ben-Akiva & Lerman, 1985). The difficulties compound further in measuring site conditions when managers are responsible for numerous sites each with their own unique set of resource conditions and amenities (Parsons & Massey, 2003). This research attempts to overcome these difficulties by examining the influence of two choice variables, trail condition and site layout, on the recreation demand for six mountain biking sites in Research Triangle area of North Carolina. For the purposes of this research, we define mountain biking as the sport of riding durable bikes with special riding gear off-road, usually over rough terrain along narrow trails that wind through forests, mountains, deserts, or fields (Chavez, 1996). The activity has grown rapidly over the past several decades. The most recent figures from the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment reveal that 41 million American participants engaged in mountain biking between 2005 and 2008 (Cordell, Betz, Green, & Mou, 2008).