The effect of temperature on outdoor recreation activities: Evidence from visits to federal recreation sites

Abstract

This paper uses over 30 million individual-level trips in federal recreation locations to investigate the impact of short-term temperature shocks on outdoor recreation activities. Our results show that in the short term, a 1 °C temperature increase during the last six months increases the total trip duration by 1.197 d (or a 4.12% increase) and the total number of trips by 0.472 (or a 5.44% increase) at the zipcode-month level. The positive effect is primarily driven by the increased number of trips and more in-state travel. We find that the impact of temperature on the number of recreation trips generally increases under a higher temperature. When the monthly temperature is below 5 °C, the temperature increase will reduce the number of trips as individuals in low-temperature regions are likely to reduce travel when the temperature gets warmer.