Critical Commentary on Fee-Demo by Professional Researchers

[From the Newsletter of the Keep the Sespe Wild Committee (Ojai, CA), Winter Solstice edition, 1999]:

ACADEMIC JOURNALS RAISE MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT FEE DEMO

In 1999, in a major research project funded by the Forest Service, professional social scientists obtained preliminary results that demonstrate that recreational user fees [such as Fee Demo] have already had a "SIGNIFICANT EXCLUSIONARY IMPACT" on low-income people in VT and NH.

The authors have learned that:

* "user fees ... substantially reduce participation in resource-based recreation by those earning less than $30,000 per year."

* "23% of low-income respondents indicated that they had either reduced or gone elsewhere as a result of recent fee increases ... while only 11% of the high-income users had made such changes."

* "a $5 daily fee for use of public lands woould exclude about 18 percent of low-income people."

In addition, the authors find that while research indicates "broad-based attitudinal support" for fees, "that attitudinal sentiment arises from the dominant line of the political discourse over the past quarter- century: no new taxes, reduced government spending;" but that in the future "we are likely to see a change in the political discourse ... [And] there are already indications that the political wind on these subjects is changing."

The authors ask, "Since fees do have a significant negative impact on participation by low-income people, how should public agencies respond? Of the usual justification given for fees, many are little more than attempts to rationalize excluded users, avoiding any moral issues involved. For example, many managers focus on agency welfare, turning excluded users into little more than an accounting problem. Similarly, a focus on resource protection or economic efficiency can support fee programs with little consideration of which visitors get excluded. The currently popular 'customer' orientation can accomplish a similar result. Since low-income people are less likely to participate in many forms of resource- based recreation, they can simply be defined as 'not our customers.' Each of these strategies is in full play in recreation management and research; what is missing is a sense of public need or mission..."

The authors conclude:

"When agencies begin to act like entrepeneurs seeking self-funding through fees, and low- income people are excluded, the public purpose -- the very reason for public ownership -- is defeated...