Demand For Wildlife Hunting In British Columbia

We present estimates of the demand for hunting licenses by residents and non residents in British Columbia for the period 1971-2000. We obtain estimates of both short-run and long-run price elasticities and discuss their revenue implications for future fee increases. We further find the demand by non residents to be strongly correlated with U.S. income variation over the business cycle; however, we find no such role for cyclical income variation for resident hunters. Finally, we demonstrate that hunters respond differently to conservation surcharges on hunting licenses relative to direct licensing charges, which has implications for policy makers introducing environmental surcharges in various contexts.