Visitation to the National Parks in the Southwest: The Influence of Economic and Climate Variables

Abstract

This study examines factors influencing visits to the national parks of the U.S. Southwest from 1980 to 2003. While previous studies on park visitation used OLS estimation to explain visitation, this study tested and corrected for panel heteroskedasticity, contemporaneous correlation, and auto correlation in the data. The results identify several environmental variables as important determinants of park visitation. These include long-term climate variables for summer and winter temperature and summer humidity, as well as indicators for reservoir levels. Important economic variables included gasoline prices, exchange rates and per capita personal income changes.