The primary value of pricing is that it regulates demand through market mechanisms. 

 As the price increases, the quantity demanded diminishes. Because a market is present, 

 problems of nondiscrimination among users based on relative value (problems found in 

 reservation and lottery systems) are reduced. Pricing is a highly flexible system. 

 For instance, it would permit weekly or seasonal fluctuation in use to be evened out by 

 corresponding fluctuations in price. Thus, there could be high prices at peak periods, 

 with low prices, or no prices, at low-use periods. 



The system has the further advantage of providing inexpensive, immediate, and 

 fairly accurate information on user preferences. Because actual behavior is an impor- 

 tant measure of preference, we should be able to extract the relative values assigned 

 to various activities by different users, based on prices they are willing or unwilling 

 to pay. Also, a user is assured access if he pays, so he can travel long distances 

 without worry. 



Finally, imposing a dollar fee to ration use allows the price of the rationing 

 program to be captured rather than lost as is the case with time pricing. 



Rationing by Merit 



The capacity of a wilderness could be allocated by requiring applicants to demon- 

 strate knowledge and skill. In many ways, merit is the oldest rationing scheme. In 

 a 1940 American Forests article, Wagar noted that "nature once certified outdoorsmen . " 

 Those who were unequipped, underskil led, and foolish simply did not return from the 

 wilderness. Because modern transportation and improved equipment made access to the 

 wilderness increasingly easy, there was a need, Wagar argued, to develop programs to 

 certify outdoorsmen. Those achieving the appropriate level of skill and knowledge 

 would be "safe to leave in the woods" (Wagar 1940) . 



To be useful as a rationing technique, a merit system would have to rely upon 

 more than a simple requirement of physical prowess. As Robinson (1975) argues, the 

 reasonably rigorous enforcement of wilderness standards already results in the ex- 

 clusion of many people. The problem of what to do with the remaining people who still 

 "make it" remains. Moreover, a merit system that functions solely on the basis of 

 physical fitness suffers from serious normative problems. There is no clear basis for 

 assuming that a person in good physical shape is more deserving of an opportunity to 

 visit wilderness than his flabby neighbor. As Robinson notes, "What is the 'merit' of 

 physical vigor?" 



The demonstration of skill and knowledge is a fairly common prerequisite in our 

 society for a variety of enterprises; for example, driver's licenses. But more to the 

 point of this paper, such demonstrations are already being used for such things as 

 Whitewater river running. Hunter safety programs, now mandatory in 18 States, requires 

 persons 12 to 18 years of age to complete an approved course of instruction in safety 

 and marksmanship before obtaining a hunting license. In many European countries such 

 as Germany, hunting is tightly controlled through a thorough program of instruction in 

 gun handling, ethics, safety, and wildlife biology. All are examples of the use of 

 merit as a means of access to a resource. 



The merit system is founded on the notion that improved behavior will reduce impact 

 Its focus would be upon reducing the per-unit impacts of use so that, conceivably, high- 

 er levels of use would be possible. It also assumes that much of the behavior that 

 currently creates undesirable resource impacts or conflicts with other users results 

 from innocently uninformed, rather than malicious, behavior. For example, nearly two- 

 thirds of the users to seven western Montana wildernesses and backcountry recreation 

 areas reported that burying their noncombustible trash was the appropriate way to dis- 

 pose of it, despite Forest Service efforts to promote a "pack it in, pack it out" 

 program (footnote 2). Thus, by supplying factual information, much undesirable behav- 

 ior could probably be reduced. 



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