Browsing by Subject "summer houses"

The objective of this thesis is to estimate the recreation value of a summer house visit. There are no previous studies on the topic although summer housing is an essential part of Finnish life. The recreation value of a summer house visit stands for the utility an individual obtains from recreation at a summer house. Recreation in a summer house encompasses all activities and relaxing at summer house and in its surrounding environment. Since environment is an integral thing in summer house recreation and, on the other hand, summer housing burdens environment, another objective of this thesis is to investigate how environmental attributes and electricity, an attribute of summer house that burdens environment, influence the recreation value. The environmental attributes we are interested in are algae that prevent recreation and availability of a beach. Since recreation is a nonmarket good, the estimation of the recreation value is performed with travel cost method, which is a nonmarket valuation method widely used in the monetary valuation of recreation services provided by environment. Econometric estimation of the travel cost model is performed here with negative binomial model. According to the results of this thesis, recreation value of visit at an electrified summer house where there is a beach available and algae do not prevent recreation is 167- 205 euro. Existence of algae that prevent recreation decreases the value by 40 per cent and nonavailability of a beach by 45 percent. Effect of electrification on the value is 3-5 per cent. The aggregate recreation value obtained from summerhouse visits done during a summer in Finland is 430-530 million euro if there is a beach available and no harm of algae. Existence of disruptive algae decreases the aggregate value by about 30 million and non-availability of a beach by about 10-20 million euro. Effect of electrification on the aggregate value is 20- 30 million euro.