Demand and welfare effects in recreational travel models: Accounting for substitution between number of trips and days to stay

In this paper we present a non-linear demand system for households’ joint choice of number of trips and days to spend at a destination. The approach, which facilitates welfare analysis of exogenous policy and price changes, is used empirically to study the effects of an increased CO2 tax. In particular, we focus on the effect of including substitution between households choice of the number of trips and days to spend at a destination in the welfare analysis. The analysis reveals that the equivalent variation (EV) measure, for the count data demand system, can be seen as an upper bound for the households welfare loss. Approximating the welfare loss by the change in consumer surplus, accounting for the positive effect from longer stays, imposes a lower bound on the households welfare loss. The difference in the estimated loss measures, from the considered CO2 tax reform, is about 20%. This emphasizes the importance of accounting for substitutions toward longer stays in travel demand policy evaluations.

► This paper study the demand for number of trips and days to spend at a destination.
► From a policy perspective we analyse the demand effects of an increased CO2 tax.
► The EV measure and change in consumer surplus are used to evaluate the welfare effects.
► Accounting for substitution towards longer stays reduces the welfare loss of the tax.