MGM2 Home Methods Definition of terms

Visitor Spending and Economic Impacts For National Park Units

This section provides visitor spending and economic impact reports for all National Park Service (NPS) units for 2003. Economic impact estimates for individual parks are based on

  1. Official NPS recreation visit estimates for 2003,
  2. Estimates of the percentage of visitors that are local, on day trips, or staying overnight in the area in campgrounds or motels,
  3. Park visitor spending profiles for distinct visitor segments from park visitor surveys at selected parks, and
  4. Regional economic multipliers based on input-output models for local regions around NPS units.

Impacts only cover the economic effects of visitor spending in the local area around the park. They do not include impacts of the park operations/employees, construction activity, or visitor spending outside the local area.

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Estimates for the individual park:
Choose a park unit from the list to obtain detailed visitor spending and economic impacts for 2003

 

State Summary:
Choose a state to display a summary of economic impacts for all NPS units in the state

 

Congressional District Summaries: The State Report gives impacts by congressional district summed for all park units in each district. The District report lists individual parks located in a given congressional district.

State Report: Choose a state to obtain totals for each congressional district in the state

District Report: Choose a district to obtain individual results for each park unit in a given congressional district

 

 

Overview of the report

Economic impacts are estimated in terms of the sales, income, jobs, and value added within the local region resulting from visitor spending. Direct effects occur in businesses that sell goods and services directly to park visitors. Secondary effects represent impacts from the circulation of the spending within the local economy (so called, “multiplier effects�), including both indirect and induced effects. Sales represents receipts by local businesses. Direct sales will be less than visitor spending as only the retail margin portion of goods purchased at retail usually accrue to the local area. Personal income covers wages and salaries including payroll benefits, jobs include both full time and part time jobs but adjust seasonal jobs to annual equivalents, value added is a measure of the total income to the region including wages and salaries to employees, profits and rents to businesses, and sales and other indirect business taxes accruing to government units.

Visits, spending and impacts are broken down into four visitor segments with distinct spending patterns:

  • Locals are residents of the local area,
  • Non-local day trips are visitors on trips from outside the local region, not staying overnight in the area. Visitors staying in owned seasonal homes or with friends and relatives are treated as non-local day visitors to the park, as they do not incur lodging expenses. Travelers on extended trips not staying overnight in the local area are also included here,
  • Hotel and camping segments are visitors who are staying overnight in the local area either inside or outside the park.

Limitations

While every effort has been made to adjust for known errors in any of the inputs to the MGM2 model, potential errors in the estimates may be due to

  • Double counting of visitors who re-enter the park during a single trip or other errors in the recreation visit estimates,
  • Errors in the estimates of the percentages of visitors by segment (many parks lack accurate estimates of the percentages of visitors who are local residents, on day trips to the region, or are staying overnight in the area outside the park, and for many others the estimates are based on small samples of park visitors during a single season),
  • Errors in generalizing spending profiles from one park or season to another – only a small percentage of parks have conducted visitor spending surveys, although spending profiles within segments are reasonably consistent across parks in similar settings, and
  • For most parks, the MGM2 model employs generic multipliers based on the characteristics of the surrounding region. These multipliers are grounded in input-output models estimated with the IMPLAN system and have proven quite reliable in applications to individual parks.

The reported impacts should be interpreted as the expected loss in economic activity within the region if the park were closed. All visitor spending is included for trips where the park is the primary reason for the trip, while only the additional spending for the park visit is counted for multi-purpose trips that would still occur in the absence of the park. Attributions of which visits and spending might be lost to the region is another potential source of error, as many parks have not broached this question. See the NPS System Estimates Report for further details.

Last Update: March 17, 2005

Number of vistiors since May 2003:
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