This study examines the cost of collecting recreational fees at US national parks and its relation to the number of visitors and the fee revenue collected. The fitted second-order polynomial regression model indicates that the cost of fee collection is indeed a function of fee revenue but is not correlated with the number of visitors. It seems to agree with the parabolic portion of a typical total cost curve where the cost of collection per dollar of revenue diminishes with higher revenue. A cluster analysis underscores the findings of the regression analysis. Further analysis indicates that federal land agencies that make more use of differential pricing schemes benefit from a lower collection cost per dollar of fee revenue.
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