TITLE:
A Probabilistic Shortage of Private Land Opened to Hunters in Northwest Minnesota
AUTHORS:
Rutherford Card Johnson, Eddie Walker II
KEYWORDS:
Probabilistic Demand, Land Use, Incentives, Decision Strategy, Behavioural Economics
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.9 No.1,
January
25,
2018
ABSTRACT: Outdoor recreation in Northwest Minnesota is popular
year round, and many residents and visitors participate in activities such as
hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, boating, and much more. Land available for
hunting, however, is at a particular premium. Hunters overall do not appear to
have enough land on which to hunt as they compete with both other hunters and
state regulations. Some private land owners have land that they keep for their
own hunting purposes, and some of that land is kept exclusively for hunting.
Private landowners in NWMN have consistently demonstrated an unwillingness to
open their land to outside consumptive recreational uses, such as hunting, even
for a fee. This situation may leads to potential overuse of some land with
respect to hunting, while other land is potentially underused, creating a potential
“tragedy of the anticommons”. Meanwhile, hotels and resorts in the region are
engaged in the ever-growing worldwide trend of ecotourism and agritourism,
though they have relatively few arrangements with private land owners. In this
study, a probabilistic demand approach is used to analyze strategic interaction
between land owners and hunters based on the results of three surveys conducted
for the State of Minnesota and the Economic Development Administration (EDA).
Mechanisms to create an outcome that aligns the utility maximization strategies
of land owners and hunters are suggested.