Introduction. Recreation is very popular in protected areas where the number of visitors is increasing from year to year. They are attracted by benefits provided by natural resources in the form of favorable conditions to spend time for leisure. These benefits have a specified value which is known as a recreational one. In this paper a method is presented how to measure it.
Material and methods. The method is an extension of an approach known as the travel cost method. The extension consists in taking additional assumptions into account like needs that drive people to recreate in protected areas and as a result the recreational and health value of the area is estimated more precisely. The calculation was realized on data collected by a survey based on an interview questionnaire among 60 respondents in the Kampinoski National Park in the second half of July 2014.
Results. The recreational and health value estimated on the results obtained from 60 respondents amounted to 235 837 PLN and 165 194 PLN respectively. The article presents also more detailed calculations of the selected surveys.
Conclusions. The factors which contribute in a decisive way into the area recreational and health value are the number of visits, the share of a health motive and the length of stay. There are also other factors of lesser contribution into the value like: the time of getting the area, the cost of its reaching and the sum respondents declared to pay for the area protection.
