The economic valuation of recreational ecosystem services is challenging due to difficulties in obtaining geo-tagged information of users. The objective of this study is to validate crowdsourced and user-generated content in order to predict visitation patterns to 16 national parks in Spain. The results may serve to encourage its utilization in the study of recreational demand in other countries, particularly developing countries, where on-site visitor information may be limited or expensive to gather. The present article employs a negative binomial regression model to evaluate the validity of two sources of data: Flickr and mobile phones. The accuracy of predictions exhibited variation across the 16 parks, indicating that site-specific characteristics, such as the seasonality of visitation patterns, may be of significance. The utilization of mobile phone data for modelling visitors yielded enhanced predictive capacity, as shown by the goodness of fit of the estimated models.

Demand for value-added products is highly segmented among different types of consumers. In this article, we assess consumer preferences for local, organic, and GMO-free potatoes in order to discover their potential niche markets. We identify sociodemographic characteristics that affect consumer preferences and compare the effects of different attributes on consumers' willingness to pay. Results suggest that the attribute “Colorado grown” carries a higher willingness to pay than organic and GMO-free attributes.

In this paper, we assess consumer willingness to pay for a mandatorycountry-of-origin labeling (COOL) program applied to beef ribeye steaks,chicken breasts, and pork chops, all labeled as “Certified U.S.” products. Aconsumer survey was mailed in spring and early summer 2003 to households inthe continental United States. Results indicate that consumers are ingeneral very concerned about food safety issues, viewing U.S. meat as thesafest among the selection of countries considered. Nevertheless, consumerwillingness to pay for Certified U.S. products is relatively small, althoughabove the expected implementation costs associated with a mandatory labelingprogram. This finding coincides with the fact that only 36% of the samplefavored consumers paying directly for the costs related to a mandatory COOLprogram.