California's Ocean Economy - California Resources Agency - State ...

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8.2.2.1 Methodology
The total non-market value of beaches in California was estimated using a two-step process.
First, we estimated the total beach visitation activity days. This is the total number of days
people spent on the beaches of California in one year. If a visitor went to the same beach or
different California beaches ten times in one year then it was counted as ten beach visitation
activity days. Second, we drew from the literature to find what we believed to be the most
appropriate estimate of value for one day of beach visitation to find the total non-market
value of beach visitation for California. The people who visit a beach on a given day may
engage in multiple outdoor recreation activities. They swim, sunbath, walk, jog, view
birds/wildlife, or just watch sunsets. Our estimates included beach visits for any recreational
activity.
8.2.2.2 Estimating Total Beach Visitation Days
A number of different sources estimate beach visitation days for California. Philip King of
the San Francisco State University estimates that as many as 378.5 million day trips were
made to California beaches by Californians in 2001 (CDBW 2002, Chapter 3). Leeworthy
(2001) uses data from the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment to estimate
that 151,429,000 beach visits were made to California beaches in 2000. The United States
Life Saving Association estimates that as many as 146 million visitor days were made to
Southern California beaches alone (USLA 2002). In another study, Morton and Pendleton
(2001) estimate that total beach attendance in Los Angeles and Orange County in 2000
exceeded 79 million visits. Morton and Pendleton’s estimates, detailed in a report to the
State Water Resources Control Board, are taken directly from lifeguard records.
Kildow and Shivendu (2001), use data from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s
BEACH Watch Program (EPA BEACH) 53 to estimate beach visitation in California. The
authors estimate the attendance per mile of beach using US EPA’s BEACH attendance
estimates for four different regions of California, i.e., Northern California, North Central
(San Francisco Bay area), Central California and Southern California and then extrapolate to
get the estimates of attendance for those beaches for which only length is known. The EPA
BEACH covers only 224 beaches, but the authors supplement the data with other sources
including guidebooks and the Coastal Commission’s Beach Access Guide. In all, the authors
identify at least 417 California beaches (see Appendix D for a complete list of beaches) and
estimate the attendance at these beaches to be 153.1 million activity days. The estimates of
Kildow and Shivendu are in line with those of the NSRE (2000) estimates, the United States
Lifeguard Agency (2002) data, and the estimates for beach attendance given by Morton and
Pendleton (2001), but are significantly lower than those of King’s estimates for the California
Department of Boating and Waterways (2001).
8.2.2.3 Estimating the Value of a Day at the Beach
53 This data collection has been discontinued because data methods were non-uniform.
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