Tourism and Beaches:

Their Multilayered Demand and Sustainability

Abstract

We estimate the demand for tourism on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, from multiple perspectives. While the literature on nonmarket valuation focuses on estimating the willingness to pay for single use value or a single purpose, this study applies onsite survey data to address visitors’ willingness to pay for multilayered tourism: for an Oʻahu trip as a whole and for individual beach visits on the island. Our survey data reveal that those visitors who have visited Oʻahu in the past do not necessarily visit beaches less frequently on subsequent Oʻahu trips. The estimated consumer surplus per person for a trip to Oʻahu is considerably large ($3,400–$5,480 based on the preferred estimate) and is in line with the literature on resort island travel costs. The aggregate surplus of all Oʻahu visitors would be approximately $21 to $34 billion. The surplus increases with the number of beach trips during each island visit, indicating that maintaining beaches enhances the demand for tourism as a whole. Our beach travel cost analysis also illustrates that the extent of substitution among different beaches is limited for Oʻahu visitors such that losing an Oʻahu beach is unlikely to be compensated for by access to the remaining beaches on the island.