Despite the potential benefits accruing from use of the rural landscape access to farmland is a contentious issue with many landowners restricting public access. Within this context, this paper first explores general public preferences and willingness to pay for farmland walking trails in the...

We propose a multi-stage modelling approach for simultaneously estimating the total number and aggregate value of recreation-related visits to a small-scale community forest in the West of Ireland. Simulated spatially-referenced individuals from a spatial microsimulation model for Ireland...

This research utilises a contingent behaviour valuation technique to value a number of improvements to recreational facilities in small-scale forests in Ireland. Willingness–to-pay estimates have previously been made for Coillte (Ireland’s state-owned forestry company) trails and forests....

This policy paper reviews the sustainability literature, with a view to furthering research in the area of the sustainability of Irish agriculture. This is the first component of a larger project currently being undertaken by the authors to assess the effect of policy reform on the economic,...

This paper analyses the effect accessibility has on General Practitioner (GP) utilisation rates at the sub-national level for Ireland. Specifically, the aim of this paper is to estimate whether there is an urban/rural differential in GP utilisation rates. We do this by simulating micro-level...

During the last decade, as the population of Ireland has become increasingly urbanised, there has been an increase in demand for outdoor recreational pursuits. Increased affluence, mobility and changing values have also brought new demands with respect to landscape, conservation, heritage and...

Previous studies that have attempted to model the participation decision of farmers in agrienvironmental schemes have used a static framework where it was not possible to examine changes in the participation decision of farmers over time. This is rectified in this paper by utilising an 11 year...

Using discrete time duration models we examine the determinants of farmers entering and exiting the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme. We also extend our models to incorporate farm level heterogeneity (or “frailty”). We introduce this dynamic element into the models by using the random...

In the last decade the demand for rural recreation has increased in Ireland as the population has become increasingly urbanised. Increased affluence, mobility and changing values have also brought new demands with respect to landscape, conservation, heritage and recreation, with a greater...

In this paper, we develop a panel data negative binomial count model that corrects for endogenous stratification and truncation. We also incorporate a latent class structure into our panel specification, which assumes that the observations are drawn from a finite number of segments, where the...