Scarpa, RiccardoThiene, MaraTempesta, Tiziano2009-01-302009-01-302007Scarpa, R., Thiene, M. & Tempesta, T. (2007). Latent class count models of total visitation demands: days out hiking in the eastern Alps. Environmental and Resource Economics, 38(4), 447-460.https://hdl.handle.net/10289/1939We report preliminary results on the investigation of the hypothesis of the existence of latent classes in the total demand for days out in a vast section of the Italian Eastern Alps. Finite mixing is informed by socioeconomic variables and it is limited to the demand portion of a hurdle model of visitation. Gradually more flexible count models are estimated moving from the Poisson to the Negative Binomial -1 and -2, to the generalized negative binomial. The implications for expected consumers surplus, predicted visitation and choke prices are discussed for a plausible 2 class model where years of experience play an important role in class membership.entravel cost methodlatent class analysisdestination choice modellingpreference heterogeneitycount modelsJournal Article10.1007/s10640-007-9087-6