Measuring the recreational value of agricultural landscape

In addition to food and fibre, agricultural land provides public amenities in the form of wildlife habitat, protection of natural resources, open spaces, aesthetic scenery and cultural preservation. Most previous studies have used contingent valuation methods to measure the value of these services. We use an alternative procedure, which provides a value of the agricultural landscape per se, as measured against a specific alternative, and is based on whether agricultural landscape had an influence on visitation decisions. Our procedure involves a travel cost model estimated by count-data regression techniques using (truncated) samples of visitors. An application to two regions in Israel reveals a substantial value for agricultural landscape, as compared with the traditional returns to farming.