January 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 50

ENGINES OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

These results are from the recently released Economic Impact of Local Parks, the first-ever nationwide
study that measured the economic
impact of local and regional parks.
This is not to say park agencies
large and small have not conducted similar studies on their own. In
fact, a number of local and regional park agencies have estimated the
value of the economic activity their
system has had on their local community, focusing on spending, tourism and property values. Until now,
however, no study has tabulated the

combined economic contributions
of the thousands of local and regional park agencies throughout the
United States.
To fill in this gap, NRPA joined
forces with the Center for Regional
Analysis at George Mason University, led by Dr. Terry Clower, to estimate the impact of spending by
local and regional park agencies on
the U.S. economy. The study focused
exclusively on the effects of spending
by local and regional park agencies
on economic activity. The study used
data from the U.S. Census Bureau
and from NRPA's benchmarking database, PRORAGIS.
So, What Do the Findings Mean?
The $140 billion estimate of economic activity represents the direct,
indirect and induced effects of local and regional park agency
spending on the U.S.
economy. So, what
is meant by direct, indirect and induced effects?
Direct effects are the
actual spending by local
and regional park systems,
including spending for
equipment, utilities, goods,
services and personnel costs.
In 2013, operations spending
at local and regional park systems totaled $32.3 billion with
another $22.4 billion in capital expenditures.
Indirect effects capture the spending associated with the park systems'
vendors. Consider the example of a
park system contracting with a local
company to spray for mosquitoes. To
deliver these services to the park system, the pest control company will
hire employees, purchase pesticides
and contract with a bookkeeping
service. The bookkeeping service, in
turn, rents office space, hires work-

48 Parks & Recreation

| J A N UA R Y 2 0 1 6 | W W W. N R PA . O R G

ers and purchases office supplies and
so on. All of the spending by the pest
control company and its vendors represents the indirect effects of park
agency spending.
Induced effects track the employees of both the park and recreation
agencies and their vendors spending
their wages in the economy.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, local and regional park agencies
had 356,000 workers on their payrolls
in 2013. This translates into $32.3 billion in direct operations spending by
the agencies throughout the United
States. This spending ripples through
the economy, expanding into almost
$80 billion in total economic activity,
which supported almost 660,000 jobs
that paid in excess of $24 billion in
salaries, wages and benefits.
Further, local and regional park
agencies spent an estimated $22.4 billion on capital programs in 2013. This
spending led to an additional $59.7
billion in economic activity that generated more than 340,000 jobs that paid
$19.6 billion in labor income.
Combining the data of operations
and capital spending finds the nation's local and regional public park
systems creating $139.6 billion in
economic activity and more than
990,000 jobs that boosted labor income by $43.8 billion.
Conservative Measures
As powerful are the findings that
local and regional park systems are
responsible for almost $140 billion
economic activity and approximately
1 million jobs, they are conservative
measures of the economic impact of
local and regional parks. This study
focused exclusively on the economic impact of local and regional park
agency spending. It did not measure
economic impacts arising from other
benefits that parks bring to their communities, including:

January 2016 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of January 2016 - Parks & Recreation