Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and DPhil in Public Policy student at the Blavatnik School of Government, Linda Bilmes, have spent the past three years gathering data in order to determine how much America’s national parks are worth to the country’s people. The answer: $92 billion.
The study’s findings were released to coincide with the National Park Service’s (NPS) 100-year anniversary, an institution that manages the entire 84 million acres of America’s national parks, monuments and historical sites, such the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty and Alcatraz Island, and runs educational programmes to engage the US population.
Bilmes, Professor John Loomis and Research Associate Michelle Haefele, both at Colorado State University, undertook two survey’s of the USA’s population between 2013 and 2015, and determined that 95% of respondents felt it was important to protect the NPS’s sites for current and future use, whether they visited or not, thus demonstrating people’s perception of the importance of the national parks. Plus 80% of those surveyed would be willing to pay increased taxes so as not to be deprived of the parks. From numerical data collected on how much people would be willing to pay in taxes, they were able to determine that the Total Economic Value of the national parks was $92 billion.
"Even though national parks are priceless public assets, it's important to estimate how much the American public would pay to protect them," said Linda. “It’s difficult to hang a value on the priceless things, but it’s even worse not to try. This study is a birthday wake-up call that shows Americans value the NPS at least 30 times more than the government spends on them."
This is the first study of its kind; previous ones have investigated the value of NPS tourism rather than how much the US public actually values the existence of the national parks and their programmes, regardless of whether or not they have visited any of the sites.
The paper is part of a larger piece of research on the value of US national parks by Bilmes and Professor Loomis. They expect to publish additional studies later this year, including one which has identified that over 800 major films and TV programmes were produced on NPS land, and estimates the value this has added to the income of the NPS.
Bilmes teaches budgeting, cost accounting and public finance at the Harvard Kennedy School, and has held senior positions within the US government. Her research at the Blavatnik School looks at the spending in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the consequence of this for national security. This year she also taught MPP students the ‘Applied Policy II: public budgeting and private finance’ module, and previously taught option modules on budgeting.
