THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF PARKS AND THEIR ECONOMIC IMPACTS 21 Studies have also estimated the economic impact of parks and green space on water quality improvement. An economic analysis of the Washington State park system, for instance, included an estimation of ecosystem services, featuring water quality, wildlife habitat, and aesthetic quality (Schundler et al. 2015). This study used a benefits transfer methodology to estimate economic valuation using prior studies of the economic impact of similar green spaces. They found that the 35 million annual visits to Washington State parks contribute an estimated $1.4 billion a year from expenditures such as purchase of outdoor equipment, the buying and selling of goods, business transactions from park products, and respent income earned in or from the park. Additionally, the Washington State parks generate between $500 million and $1.2 billion a year in ecosystem service value, measuring aesthetics, habitat for wildlife, and natural water filtration to sustain local water systems (Schundler et al. 2015). Comparatively, although a wealth of literature quantifies the benefits of improved mental health, comparatively little research isolates the economic impact of the mental health benefits of parks and green spaces. A research framework from Buckley and Brough (2017) identifies some of the key causal pathways for quantifying mental health benefits of parks, focusing on decreased mental health care costs, improved workplace productivity, and avoided costs of “antisocial” behavior, but it does not estimate the economic benefit of these three pathways. Their analytical framework includes a threestep process: quantify park users and uses along a set of categories, quantify proportional changes to mental health along those categories, and use national data on economic benefits of mental health to estimate the economic value of parks in mental health. The framework described would require three datasets: park use patterns, mental health outcomes, and national economic values. This approach aligns with similar conceptual frameworks proposed for measuring the economic impact of parks and green space on physical health (Bedimo-Rung, Mowen, and Cohen 2005). This physical health framework proposed measuring the impact of user characteristics and park amenities and features on park use (Bedimo-Rung, Mowen, and Cohen 2005). Then, using park usage and types of use, the framework could identify rates of physical activity and estimate the impact on physical health (Bedimo-Rung, Mowen, and Cohen 2005). Finally, economic values could be attached to the physical health impact using national data on health care costs (Bedimo-Rung, and Mowen, and Cohen 2005). A simplified version of this analysis features in several attempts to quantify health impacts by counting park users under and over the age of 65, then using a cost modifier (the average difference in health costs between an active person within that age range and an inactive person) to estimate cost benefits ( Harnik and Welle 2009).6
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