Table 4.— Net economic value of the St. Lawrence River-eastern Lake Ontario bass fishery to 



New York resident anglers, 1976. 



Location 



Type of fishery 



Site 1 



Site 2 



Site 3 



Site 4 



Site 5 



Total 



Table 5.— Visitation and expenditures by licensed New York resident bass anglers, 



1976. 1 



'All values are based on the definition of bass 

 the survey sample to the angler population. 



angler for this study and are expanded from 



the individual species are not mutually exclu- 

 sive. Addition of the economic value across sites 

 yields a total annual value for the five sites of 

 $18,386,700 for the combined bass fishery in 

 1976. This amount represents the annual NEV to 

 licensed New York resident bass anglers in 1976 

 for the five sites that make up the St. Lawrence 

 River-eastern Lake Ontario bass fishery. The 

 effect of changes in travel cost assumptions can 

 be seen by comparison of A, B, and C of Table 4. 

 Changes in per mile monetary costs influence 

 NEV less than changes in time costs. 



The results reported in Table 4 and discussed 

 above relate to the fishery's economic value to li- 



censed New York resident anglers in 1976. For 

 policy purposes, the current value of the recrea- 

 tional fishery would be more appropriate. The 

 most accurate way to estimate the current value 

 of the fishery would be to use current angler visi- 

 tation and travel cost data, which are unavail- 

 able. It would be inappropriate to use current 

 travel cost information with visitation data from 

 1976 to estimate current demand for the fishery 

 because visitation patterns may have signifi- 

 cantly changed since the earlier time period. The 

 value of the fishery can be stated in terms of 1982 

 dollars by multiplying the results in Table 4 by 

 1.5, which represents the ratio of 1982 to 1976 



173 



