Hjerpe, E. E., and A. Hussain. 2016. Willingness to pay for ecosystem conservation in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest: a choice modeling study. Ecology and Society 21(2):8.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08122-210208

Wilderness attracts tourists and generates visitor spending in proximate communities as people enjoy Wilderness for outdoor recreation. Wilderness also attracts amenity migrants and out-of-region investments into surrounding regional economies. To investigate the amount and types of employment and income generated by Wilderness visitation, we conducted an economic contribution analysis of aggregate national visitor expenditures. The U.S. Forest Service National Visitor Use and Monitoring (NVUM) economic spending profiles were used to construct types and amounts of Wilderness visitor spending and were applied to an estimated 9.9 million annual visitors across federal agencies. IMPLAN modeling software was used to estimate total effects and multipliers for output, employment, income, and value added. Results show that some $500 million is annually spent in communities adjacent to Wilderness, generating a direct effect of 5,700 jobs and a total output effect over $700 million across numerous industries ($2012 including indirect and induced effects).

Forest restoration positively affects rural economies by facilitating employment and income generation with logging, wood utilization, and other restoration activities. To investigate economic effects and modeling of forest restoration, a regional contribution analysis of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) in Arizona was conducted. With over 12,000 acres mechanically thinned in 2017, 4FRI treatments led to the processing of 400,000 green tons of sawlogs and biomass. Restoration activities spurred more than 900 full-time equivalent jobs in the region, $50 million in regional labor income, and affected over 140 different industry sectors in the region. When compared to the US Forest Service Treatments for Restoration Economic Analysis Tool model estimates for 4FRI economic contributions, we found that using primary data from 4FRI contractors provided more conservative results. Primary considerations for modeling forest restoration contributions include contractor surveys, appropriate investigation of the regional context, methodological transparency in bridging restoration expenditures to input-output models, and consideration of how to enhance restoration contributions.