This report encompasses two interlinked research projects. The first of these investigates the potential for generating transferable models for predicting visitor arrival numbers at woodland recreation sites across Great Britain. The second project sets out to estimate transferable monetary assessments of the value of such woodland visits through a meta-analysis of previous valuation studies.

Both of these projects develop novel methodologies which demonstrably improve upon previous approaches to the issues addressed. The study of arrival numbers takes as its underlying approach a function transfer method whereby models relating the number of visitors to a sample of sites are estimated and then applied to predict arrivals at other sites. Here the basic assumption is that the functional relationship between the number of arrivals and a well specified set of predictors (such as measures of population distribution and socio-economic profile, accessibility and travel time, substitute availability, site characteristics,etc.), as described by the coefficients on those predictors, will hold between sites.