ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF A FOREST RECREATION AREA: AN EXAMPLE FROM ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Abstract

Forest recreation areas play an important role in urban sustainability. These areas should essentially provide viable and continuous urban recreation experiences for the residents. Accordingly, recreational assessments of these areas have to be performed, supplying the necessary data to the public administrators to make right decisions. Statistical analysis techniques taking more inexpensive and readily available data should be employed in recreational value assessments. In this study, modern statistical analysis methods using time series type of data have been applied for the value estimations of recreational areas in one of the most crowded cities of the world, Istanbul. The exploited time series consists of social, economic and ecological variables for the period between 1970 and 2008. As for the statistical analysis methods, Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test, Engle-Granger Two-Step Co-integration test and analysis techniques have been employed. According to the results of the studies to determine the recreational value, it has been shown that the selected econometric analysis techniques using time series data can be successfully employed provided that a number of issues such as stationarity and spurious regression must be resolved with the help of additional and supplementary scientific studies.