| Valuing non-market goods is a unique economic problem. When a market exists for a good, traditional economic techniques may be utilized to determine the value society associates with the good. When that good is not traded in a market, as in the case of wetland recreation, the economist must find some way to compensate for the lack of market signals.;In this dissertation, I develop a recreation demand model that is used to link two disparate sources of data. The two types of data are revealed preference data and stated preference data. Revealed preference data is data that is observed by the analyst (i.e., travel cost data). Stated preference data is typically gathered through a survey, and takes the form of respondent's answers to hypothetical questions (i.e., contingent valuation or contingent behavior data). Revealed preference data comes from actual behavior while stated preference data comes from hypothetical statements.;In addition to developing a model to link revealed and stated preference data, I consider specific hypothesis tests to investigate the consistency of the two data sources, as well as to investigate specific biases in each data set. Specific attention is paid to the various ways of interpreting the results of these hypothesis tests.;The model developed in this dissertation allows for a more realistic treatment of the respondent's travel time than is generally used in the literature. The treatment of time is found to be an important determinant in the hypothesis tests of consistency between revealed and stated preference data.;The model is also used to investigate the issue of benefits transfer. Benefit transfer is the issue of whether benefit estimates generated for a studied resource can be transferred to an unstudied resource. |
