ORVal tool featured in Countryside Jobs Service (CJS) Focus on Recreation

The British love ‘the outdoors’. On a sunny spring day you will find us in our hundreds of thousands setting off with the dog to the local park, pulling on our walking boots to go hiking in the countryside or packing the back of the car with a picnic for the beach. In fact MENE, the national survey carried out by Natural England each year, suggests that over 2.5 billion such trips are taken by residents of England every year.

That the countryside and its environment provide a much-loved resource is beyond dispute, though until recently making a case for enhancing that recreational asset has been hampered by an inability to accurately identify the value that the public put on such enhancements. The Outdoor Recreation Valuation (ORVal) Tool has been developed by the Land Environment, Economics and Policy (LEEP) institute at the University of Exeter in order to provide just such evidence.

The full article by Professor Brett Day and Dr Greg Smith, can be downloaded here - CJS Focus May 19 (article can be found on page 13)