Shedding light on the self-consumption value of recreational hunting in European Mediterranean forests

• Simulate a price to the owners' hunting self-consumption in the experimental AAS framework
• 76% of the big game driven hunt spots are self-consumed in Andalusia.
• Hedonic prices and choice experiments are jointly used.
• Self-consumption imputation is based on both competitive prices and hunting costs.

This paper proposes a novel approach for simulating the price of hunting self-consumption by owners in the experimental Agroforestry Accounting System (AAS). The “enlightenment approach” allows allocating a competitive price or, alternatively, a price that matches the recreational hunting cost for driven hunts associated with self-consumption. The starting point is information gathered from two surveys of 740 owners of hunting estates (supply side) and 557 hunters (demand side) in Andalusian forests. The results show that 76% of the total driven hunt spots for big game were self-consumed by owners in the 2009–2010 hunting season. Regarding the traditional AAS framework, self-consumption is nearly one million euros less when the enlightenment approach is considered. This lower bound, compared to the upper bound imputed through market prices in the AAS, allows simulating a range of values for hunting self-consumption and expanding policy recommendations for hunting management.