Synchronizing with the economic growth, the higer accessibility in transportation, and the increase in per capita income, tourism has grown to be one of the most important industries during the period of economic transition in Taiwan. However, past studies of demand analysis in recreation are either explored with aggregate data or aimed at the disaggregate choice behavior for recreation activities or sites, and neglect both the participation in recreation decided by individual recreation experience and the demand for leisure time. As to the supply side, most of the past studies are lack of considerations of economic conditions, and the deficiency makes it impossible to combine both the supply and demand for recreation to evaluate the economic benefits for recreation supply.
Based on the theory of utility maximization for consumer, the demand function of recreation time for tourists is derived by the household production function of Translog type, and the discrete/continuous choice model developed by Hanemann(1984b) is adopted to formulate the overall recreation demand analysis model. The study intends to construct an overall analysis framework combining a continuous total tourism time choice model with the discrete participation and site choice model, and, by using the tourists‘ activity data of 10 major recreational sites on Taiwan, the domestic tourism demand behavior for tourists in Taiwan is demonstrated in details. With regard to economic analysis of resource supply, the Translog cost function is specified so as to analyze the economic characteristics of recreation supply in Taiwan, and the production technology, the utilization of input factors, and the investment efficiency in capital are explored by the estimated cost function using the cost data of 96 recreational sites in Taiwan. Finally, by adopting the analysis framework combining both the demand and supply side suggested by Anderson, Palma, & Thisse(1992), the trousim demand analysis model and the marginal cost for recreation supply are then used to formulate the profit function for recreation supply, and the economic benefits under various supply market conditions are derived to compare the policy implications for recreation development strategies.
The empirical analysis for the tourism cost function shows that the time value of tourism is about 73% of tourists‘ wage rate. The results of the estimated discrete site choice model show that tourists making tours frequently are significantly different from those making tours rarely in the distance that they travel and the propensity of their tourism cost. Through the result of the parameter calibration for discrete recreation participation model, it is found that tourists who own more automobiles would probably take part in tourism activity more frequently. Besides, the marginal cost of tourism time, the cost that a person increases an extra toursim day, effects negatively on tourism participation. Conversely, tourists‘ income shows positive effects on tourism participation, and its marginal utility decreases with the increasing of the tourists’ participation frequency and income. The results of the regression total tourism time choice model indicate that tourists‘ income effects positively on their total tourism days, while tourists’ marginal cost of tourism time effects negatively. Furthermore, by the analysis of elasticity and sensitivity, the increase in marginal cost of tourism time, resulting from the increase in tourists’ expenditure or wage rate, would probably make their tourism pattern turn to be more frequent but less days, while the increase in tourists‘ income may increase the frequencies and days of those tourists whose income are lower and who make tours less frequently but decrease the frequencies and days of those tourists whose income are high and who make tours more frequently.
The result of the empirical study on cost analysis shows that the cost elasticity of output for recreation supply arrives at about 0.3551, which means the production technology for recreation supply is constant returns to scale in Taiwan. The input factor elasticities for recreation supply shows that the variations in labor price and operation price effect heavily on production cost and which means that the operators put more emphases on the derivative consumption of tourists. Meanwhile, the substitutive relation between labor cost and operation cost and that between labor cost and maintenance cost reprensent that the utilization efficiency of input factors can be effectively increased by using the existing labors to work on operation and maintenance which are not specialized. The labor price elasticity of demand is the greatest among the input factors, and which means the use of labors is the most flexible. In addition, the result of the analysis on the utilization of capital reveals that the operation efficiency for the recreational sites of public ownership is significantly lower than those of private ownership.
Lastly, to assess economic benefits of recreation under market structure of oligopoly and perfect competition, it is found that market structure of perfect competition can achieve an economic benefit of 500 million more than that of oligopoly market. in addition, when the capital invested is increased to 125% under market structure of perfect competition, it would probably result in a decreasement of 13.5% of economic benefits. Nevertheless, the increase in total demand of tourism can effectively increase the economic benefits of both kind of recreational market, and the increasement of economic benefits for oligopoly market arrives at about 25% while that for perfect competition market is about 18.3% when total demand of tourism is increased to 125%. Taking into considerations of the utilization of environmental resources together with the economic benefits, it is suggested to set the market opened for recreational sites of metropolitan types so as to protect the economic benefits of tourists because of its higher opportunity of substitutive use but to constrain the freedom of entering or exiting market for the other three types of recreational sites for the sake of their lower opportunity of substitutive use and unrecovery of resource use. In order to increase the efficiency of operation and to protect the economic benefits of tourists, it is suggested the market development of state-developed and private-operated form together with a price-supersiving mechanism for the constrained markets.