Economic Analysis & Policy Vol.37 No.1, March 2007 77 © 2007 THE VALUE OF A RECREATIONAL BEACH VISIT: AN APPLICATION TO MOOLOOLABA BEACH AND COMPARISONS WITH OTHER OUTDOOR RECREATION SITES * Boyd Blackwell † National Centre for the Marine Environment (NCME) Australian Maritime College Rosebud Victoria Australia. Beaches and foreshores worldwide offer a broad range of goods and services to coastal communities and economies. One service, beach recreation, provides considerable benefits to most Australians. This paper represents the first Australian attempt to value a recreational visit to surf beaches within the local urban setting of Mooloolaba beach, Sunshine Coast, Queensland using a truncated negative binomial individual travel cost model. Income, on-site and off-site travel expenditure and time, party size, and employment status helped to explain visits. The consumer surplus estimates provided in this paper are within the bounds of the international literature. The passive-use values of beaches are higher than those of national parks or forests. Assessing beach non-use values is an area for future research. INTRODUCTION This paper estimates, for the first time in Australia, the monetary value of a recreational beach visit using the individual travel cost method via a truncated negative binomial regression model. Such estimates may be useful to coastal managers, councillors and other interested parties who deliberate over the allocation of resources to maintain or improve the services and biophysical infrastructure of beaches and coastal foreshores. Given the recent sea-change phenomenon and the increasing urbanisation of coastal Australia, outdoor recreation resources such as beaches are likely to succumb to considerable health pressures and trade-offs in the allocation of scarce funding at the local government level. The contextual comparison of beach recreation values may highlight the potential oversight that beaches in Australia currently receive. Most beaches in Australia are managed and maintained by local government councils, unlike * This paper does not necessarily reflect the views of the NCME or AMC. † The author is grateful for the following financial support for this research: a University of Queensland Postgraduate Research Scholarship; a Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism Augmentative Grant; a Surf Lifesaving Queensland Scholarship; and a Churchie Old Boys Overseas Study Scholarship.