The welfare impacts of unanticipated trip limitations in travel cost models

Travel cost models are routinely used to assess the impact of policy change s on consumer's surplus. In this paper we show that when the policy change leads to a partial closure of the resource, then the standard use of consum er's surplus per trip can be inappropriate depending upon the theoretical b ehavioral model underlying the analysis. We demonstrate the importance of t heoretical model choice using an analysis of the Gulf of Mexico's recreatio nal red snapper fishery.