Money Generation Model- Version 2

MGM2 Summary 

MGM2 is a set of Microsoft Excel workbooks for estimating the economic impacts of NPS visitor spending on a local region. MGM2 is an update of the NPS Money Generation Model as originally developed by Ken Hornback. Daniel Stynes and Dennis Propst at Michigan State University developed the new version, called MGM2, in 2001. MGM2 Features are describe further below.

Like the original MGM model, MGM2 estimates the impacts that park visitors have on the local economy in terms of their contribution to sales, income and jobs in the area.  The Money Generation Model  produces quantifiable measures of park economic benefits that can be used for planning, concessions management, budget justifications, policy analysis and marketing. Refinements to the MGM model make MGM2 more readily applicable to evaluating management, policy and marketing alternatives, both inside and outside the park. Economic impact information has proven quite helpful in fostering partnerships within the community and garnering support for park policies and interests. The economic analysis also helps to identify the roles the park, local community and tourism businesses play in attracting and serving visitors.

Update August 18, 2008:   The latest version of MGM2 software is available in the download section  below.

Impacts for all park units for 2006 - NPS System Report for 2006

Impact Reports based on 2006 VSP Studies (PDF format) - forthcoming
 2007 VSP Studies
Impact Reports based on 2005 VSP Studies (PDF format)

Impacts for all park units for FY2005 - NPS System Report for FY 2005

Impact Reports based on 2004 VSP Studies (PDF format)

 Impact Reports for 2003 and 2004 (PDF format).  These reports are also available at the NPS Social Science website.

Based on Visitor Survey Project Studies
Earlier reports for selected National Parks.   (PDF format)  

Visitor Survey Project Studies
 Others  Impact estimates for all national parks, 2003. We have posted MGM2 model estimates of economic impacts of visitor spending for individual national park units based on year 2003 recreation visit figures. Go to our database site to select an individual park or a summary of all NPS units in a given state. These estimates are based on the best information we have for each park. For some parks very little information was available about parks visitors or their spending patterns, while for other parks recent park visitor surveys provide the basis for more reliable estimates. Some manager or researcher judgement was required to fill gaps in some of the required MGM2 inputs for many parks. Results for parks with greater visitor information were used to estimate input parameters for similar parks when data was lacking. The systemwide report and more complete reports for parks with recent VSP studies (see links above) may be helpful in interpreting the economic impact results.

Impacts of Heritage Areas:  We have been working with six national heritage areas to gather baseline information and apply the MGM2 model to situations where reliable counts of visitors and estimates of spending are  more difficult to obtain. We have prepared a visitor survey guidebook to help heritage areas in gathering data for use with the MGM2 model. It is available in PDF format -  ANHA Procedure Guide . Reports for individual cooperating areas are listed below. An overall summary and comparison across heritage areas is also available. Final reports for Silos and Smokestacks and Ohio and Erie Canal are awaiting final survey data.

    Summary Report Covering cooperating areas (data through June 2004) - PDF (791 K).

    Reports for individual heritage areas:
    Preliminary results
Systemwide Impact Estimates. NPS visitors spent $10.6 billion in the local regions around National Parks in 2001. The direct effects of this spending on gateway communities is $3.1 billion in wages and salaries (including payroll benefits) and 212,000 jobs in local tourism-related businesses. Including secondary effects within the local area,  park visitor spending supports a total of 267,000 jobs, $4.5 billion in personal income and $4.6 billion in value added. Park visitors staying overnight in motels, lodges, cabins and other commercial lodging in or near the park  account for 56% of visitor spending, day trips from outside the local area account for 30% of spending and local residents and campers account for 7% each.  The majority of direct jobs are in eating and drinking establishments (77,000 jobs), lodging establishments (59,000 jobs), retail trade (35,000 jobs), and amusements & entertainment (31,000 jobs). These estimates do not cover all spending by park visitors, but attempt to determine the loss in economic activity in gateway communities if the parks were closed. Receipts and operations of the NPS are excluded as are visitor purchases at home or en route to National Parks (beyond a 30-100 mile radius of the park). In cases where a park visit was not the primary purpose of the trip, only the additional costs of the park visit are counted. .NPS Systemwide impacts, 2001 (PDF).

Some guidance to economic data available on WWW.  Comparisons of MGM2 estimates of economic impacts for particular parks with other local economic data can be helpful both for validating the MGM2 estimates and for putting them in a relative context. It may be hard for your audience to comprehend what $40 million in spending or 3,000 jobs means. Showing the park supports as many jobs as some well known local industry may get the message across better, or estimating the percentage of tourist spending or hotel room nights that park visitors account for. These comparisons require information about tourism in general in the area or income and jobs generated by particular local industries. Much of this information is available on WWW. See our Guide to economic data and links to  Tourism economic data by state.

Impact Analyses using the MGM2 Shortform. For parks lacking a recent visitor survey and visitor spending data, the MGM2 Shortform was used to estimate visitor spending and impacts. These estimates rest somewhat on manager and researcher judgements about the mix of visitors and spending patterns at each park.
Visitor surveys involve both sampling and questionnaire design issues, that are often unique to each study. The following provide some general guidelines:
Contact Information: Direct any questions, problems or comments to Daniel Stynes. Please contact us if you have problems downloading files, uncover any bugs or  have any other questions about the MGM2 model.

E-mail :   Daniel Stynes        
Phone : (517)-353 9881      
FAX: (517)-432-3597
Mail: Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1222.


  Features of MGM2

Model inputs Model Outputs Quick Look at MGM2 in HTML

    The following pages provide a quick tour of the MGM2 models.

    The MGM2 Software and documentation may be downloaded below.

Downloading MGM2 documentation and software

Latest versions of MGM2 model and documentation

 
Original MGM2 models developed in 2001.

MGM2 documentation is in Acrobat PDF format and all MGM2 software are Excel  files. Users will need Acrobat reader and a copy of Excel (version 7.0 or higher).  Files may be downloaded individually or in zipped packages. To download a file, click on the link and save to your machine. Zipped files must be unzipped prior to use.

(1) MGM2 Software              MGM2.xls, Utilities and a basic set of spending & multiplier files (zipped)
                                               Includes all of the Excel spreadsheet files below (246K)
 

A sample set of spending and multiplier data files are included with the zipped package. Others are available at the MSU MGM2 website.
(2) MGM2 Manuals and documentation
Older material for heritage areas
1. Presentation at a workshop on applying the MGM2 model to heritage areas at the Alliance of National Heritage Areas annual meeting in Waterloo, Iowa, October3, 2002.
2. Here are some reading materials attendees may  browse prior to the meeting: