Abstract
Grasslands offer a variety of ecosystem services including recreational opportunities. Unlike forests and coastal beaches, grasslands do not offer natural opportunities for recreators to adapt to extremely warm temperatures, potentially making grassland recreation sensitive to climate change. I use mobility data to estimate a causal model of the relationship between short-run weather shocks and demand for recreation at 16nationally notable grasslands between January 2019 and April 2022. I use a repeated discrete choice random utility maximization model and specify visit utility as a function of a set of average temperature, precipitation, average wind speed, and snowfall bins. I identify the causal relationship using grassland, month-of-year, and hunting season fixed effects. Willingness to pay (WTP) per household for a grassland day visit is about $53.60 on average - nearly twice the WTP for a coastal fishing trip in the Eastern U.S. I find that grassland recreators are averse to visiting during months with more extreme average temperature days, but having more days with average temperatures slightly above extreme cold has no effect on demand. Snowfall is also a significant demand determiner. Responses to temperature and snowfall are heterogeneous across historical climate regions. Projections for 2018 - 2100 suggest grassland recreators are likely to experience average annual welfare gains from climate change of up to $1.3 million from increased visit quality rather than quantity.