Question

Butchart Gardens is a very large garden in Victoria, British Columbia, renowned for its beautiful plants. It is so large that it could hold many times more visitors than currently visit it. The garden charges an admission fee of $30. At this price, 1,000 people visit the garden each day. If admission were free, 2,000 people would visit each day.
Are visits to Butchart Gardens excludable or nonexcludable? Are they rival in consumption or nonrival? What type of good is it?

Answer 1

Answer:

In this case,visit to the Butchart Garden is an excludable and non-rivalrous good and is an example of a Club Good.

Explanation:

First,since the Burchart Gardens charges an admission fee of $30 for each visitor,anyone who has not paid the fee cannot or will not be able to have access inside the garden.Therefore,it is currently not a free service for all the visitors.In this sense,a visit to the Butchart Garden is excludable.It can be assumed that any visitor who wishes to come inside the garden and have a visit will have to mandatorily pay the admission fee.

Secondly,as Butchart Garden is a public area and anyone who pays the admission fee can officially gain access to the garden,enjoyment of the natural and aesthetic beauty of the garden by any one visitor does not reduce the simultaneous enjoyment of any other visitor who has paid the admission fee and hence,gained access to the garden.In economic language,if we consider the garden visit as a particular commodity,then the consumption of the commodity by any one visitor or consumer does not reduce the simultaneous consumption of any other visitor/s or consumer/s,provided that they have all paid the admission fee to gain access to the commodity or garden in this case.Therefore,visits to the Butchart Garden can be considered as non-rivalrous.

Now,since the visit to the Butchart garden is both excludable and non-rivalrous in nature,it can be considered as an example of a Club Good.