A Comparison of Welfare Estimates from Four Models for Linking….pdfVIP

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 38, 143 157 1999 Article ID jeem.1999.1083, available online at http: on A Comparison of Welfare Estimates from Four Models for Linking Seasonal Recreational Trips to Multinomial Logit Models of Site Choice* George R. Parsons Uniersity of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716 Paul M. Jakus Uniersity of Tennessee, Knoxille, Tennessee 37901 and Ted Tomasi Uniersity of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716 and Entrix Inc., Wilmington, Delaware 19809 Received November 3, 1997; revised September 1998 We compare four methods of linking a site choice Random Utility Model to a seasonal trip model. The four approaches are those proposed by Morey et al. 1993, Am J . Agric . Econom. 75, 578 592 , Hausman et al. 1995, J . Public Econom. 56, 1 30 , Parsons and Kealy 1995, J . Eniron. Econom. Management 29, 357 367 , and Feather et al. 1995, J . Eniron. Econom. Management 29, 214 227 . We estimate the alternative models using a common data set and calculate a change in welfare for two policy scenarios across the models. We find that there is little practical difference between the approaches of Morey et al. and Hausman et al. They are nearly the same mathematically, and the welfare estimates in our empirical example are quite close. The approaches of Parsons and Kealy and Feather et al. generated w