Abstract
The National Park Šumava represents an important and exceptionally extensive recreation area. The popularity among outdoor recreationists and the pressure on the use of the area for recreation grow in time-yearly visits are estimated at 2 millions visitors, where the most exposed localities in the high season experience a daily load of several thousands of recreationists.
Such an area has a large potential to deliver significant non-market services and associated benefits to its visitors. Recreation services are, however, not connected to a direct value that would be evident from the market.
The estimation of the benefits associated with recreation requires employing a surrogate market, and estimating the relationship between demanded quantity of visits, the shadow price of the visit (travel cost) and other quantitative and qualitative determinants of visitation. Specific aim of this analysis is disentanglement of the factors that affect the visitation of the National Park Šumava.
The final output of the analysis is the estimation of non-market recreation use value of a visit to the area in monetary terms.