The Travel Cost Method: an empirical investigation of Randall's difficulty

Randall (1994) argued that the Travel Cost Method (TCM) cannot generate mon etary measures of recreation site benefits for use in Cost Benefit Analysis . Randall argues that what is relevant to recreational decision-making is t he subjective, and unobservable, price of travel, whereas TCM uses the obse rver-assessed cost of travel. Hence, TCM can at best give ordinally measura ble welfare estimates. 'Randall's Difficulty' is formulated as an estimatio n problem and results are derived for that problem. The meaning of, prospec ts for, and usefulness of ordinal measurement are explored, and the existen ce of a solution to Randall's Difficulty is considered.