Southern California Beach Valuation Project - Los Angeles and Orange County Beaches

Los Angeles and Orange Counties were the first two counties included in the Southern California Beach Valuation Project. Fifty-one separate beaches were identified in the two-county area. The research team conducted an inventory of all beaches in the study area and created a database with beach attributes and attendance information. The "Heal the Bay" water quality ratings are one of the beach attributes. The beach attribute data and attendance data are all organized in a geographic information system using ArcView software. The research team also developed a beach recreation model to estimate the economic impact of changes in water quality or beach closures.

Beach User Surveys
Diary Surveys
Research Phases
Reports
Links

Beach User Surveys

The research team, in cooperation with experts at the funding agencies, designed several surveys. All surveys were conducted by telephone by the Survey Center at Chico State University. The first survey, called the Recruitment Survey, covered a five-county area in Southern California. This was a random survey of the general population (users and nonusers of Southern California’s beaches), 18 years old or older in telephone households. The survey identified whether the respondent was a user of Southern California beaches. If not, demographic information was collected and the interview ended. If so, information was gathered about the individual's beach use and demographic information. Some information was also gathered about the 1999 Huntington Beach closure.

Respondents were then asked if they would participate in an ongoing beach study. If they agreed, they were recruited into the beach panel. They would be called every two months and asked about their beach activity during the previous two-month period. Panel members were sent calendars to mark down which beaches they visited and if they went in the water. Panel members also received maps showing all of the beaches in Southern California. The Recruitment Survey had 1,848 respondents, of which 1,024 were users of Southern California beaches. Of the 1,024 beach users, 822 agreed to become panel members.

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Diary Surveys

Each panel member was contacted every two months for one year. Detailed information was gathered on their beach use of Southern California beaches, for the previous two-month period. In addition, several diaries (or two-month waves) included modules of information. Modules were sets of questions designed to support issues for analysis.

Diary 1 (December 1999 – January 2000) included a "substitutions effect" module. Respondents were asked what they would have done if the last beach they visited had been closed. Diary 2 (February – March 2000) included a health module. The health module would allow tests of whether reported illnesses could be related to beach activities. Diary 3 (April – May 2000) included a module on knowledge of Southern California beaches to address issues of site choice and perceptions of beach quality. Diary 4 (June - July 2000) included a module on expenditures to address market economic impacts. Diary 5 (August – September 2000) included a module with contingent behavior/valuation questions. Diary 6 (October – November 2000) had a module that asked respondents if they had visited San Onofre State Beach in the last two years, and if not, why. This information was designed to support an analysis of the effects of power plants and beach choice.

Not only does the diary data support analyses of issues addressed by the separate issue modules; the beach use data over time allowed the research team to explore issues of seasonality, changes in the amount and type of use, and specifically, to test for time substitution in response to changes in beach quality.

Research Phases

Research was conducted in two phases. Phase I was a preliminary analysis focused primarily on Diary 4 data (June – July, 2000). Phase I included a variety of reports detailing survey sampling methods and descriptive statistics of the collected data. Phase I also included preliminary estimates of the market economic impact (e.g., sales/output, income and employment) associated with beach recreation. Estimates of nonmarket economic use values as they relate to user and site characteristics or beach attributes, were made using preliminary models. The results were experimental and not suitable for release to the public.

Phase II of the study included all six two-month waves of the diary data, and explored many alternative methods of modeling the data for estimating nonmarket economic use values and how they might vary with changes in beach attributes (e.g., water quality, parking availability, quality of beach sand, etc.) and user characteristics.

Status

The research team is working on non-technical summary report for the entire project and finalizing data and documentation of the project on CD-ROM for other researchers.

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Reports

• Long Beach Economic Impact Report (pdf, 1.1 mb) This report contains economic impact estimates of a change in water quality at Long Beach in Southern California.
• Economic Impact Report (pdf, 333 kb) This report contains economic impact estimates of beach recreation on the local economies.
• Data Collection Production Report (pdf, 696 kb) This report details survey sampling methods, panel selection, attrition and replenishment, and response rates.
• Recruitment Report (pdf, 304 kb) Presents comparative profiles of beach users versus non beach users and panel members versus beach goers not in the panel. Also includes a preliminary analysis of the 1999 Huntington Beach closure.
• Beach Activity by Wave (pdf, 44 kb) Presents profiles of panel member beach activities by two-month wave.
• Summary Report on Expenditures Module (pdf, 52 kb) Preliminary estimates of market economic impact of associated with June-July, 2000 beach use.
• Model Report (pdf, 308 kb) This report discusses various model issues and judgments used in arriving at the final models.
• Welfare Estimates Report (pdf, 84 kb) This report presents results from using the final estimated model to estimate changes in trips and welfare using five policy/management scenarios.
• Model User Manual (pdf, 80 kb) This report is the user manual for the final electronic model that can be used to estimate changes in trips and welfare changes for changes in water quality or beach closures.

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