Statistical Properties of Welfare Measures from Count-Data Models of Recreation Demand

This article compares estimates and distributions of consumer surplus measures derived from truncated and untruncated count-data models. Large differences between the means and variances of the consumer surplus estimates of the truncated and untruncated models were found. Mathematical approximation provides reasonable estimates of the mean consumer surplus measures, but approximation of the variances is poor due to truncation errors. These findings suggest that consumer surplus measures derived from the truncated estimator should be viewed with caution.