Understanding Tourists’ Willingness-to-Pay for Rural Landscape Improvement and Preference Heterogeneity

Abstract

With the vigorous development of urbanization and rural tourism, the landscape of villages and towns has undergone tremendous changes under the influence of policies and industries. In order to avoid irreversible changes in the local heritage landscape and promote local sustainable development, it is necessary to strengthen the attention and research on the rural recreation landscape. This research examines the value of rural landscape recreation by applying the choice experiment method (CEM) to a suburban area in Sichuan, China. Mixed logit models were adopted in examining tourists’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for rural landscape improvement and preference heterogeneity. An assessment of the rural landscape’s recreational value was made using the compensating surplus calculation method. Results reported are of four important landscape elements: ecological environment, rural life and associated productive landscape, rural housing, and service landscape, ranked by tourists from high-to-low. A major finding of the research is that an increase in rural tourism is dependent upon improvements to landscape elements. The results of this research can provide policymakers with valuable information necessary to develop a successful plan to attract and increase tourism in rural areas of China.

Analysis on Tourists’ Preferences for Rural Tourism Destinations in Romania

“…In the rural areas of Korea, tourism is sought for its "learning" opportunities, "excitement" or "family togetherness", not for the countryside itself [8], and these results are supported by other studies as well [9][10][11]. The perspective is quite different in Western Europe for example, where the rural destinations are perceived as a source of aesthetically pleasing landscapes and the possibility to admire the natural environment, the fauna and flora [9][10][11] and most of all for the tranquility [12][13][14][15]. It became obvious that the motivations to choose rural tourism are related to the natural or anthropic resources of each country or by the cultural context [16].…”

“…In China, a long-stay vacation in a rural area is considered to be an important element of revitalizing the rural economy, but for a longer voyage, there are some issues that must be taken into consideration at the destination: comfort, the rurality itself, publicity and familiarity [14]. What is more surprising is the fact that rural tourism facilities gain different attributes for urban consumers who more appreciate the natural simplicity of these facilities than wanting luxury and elegance [15].…”

Temporal Distribution as a Solution for Over-Tourism in Night Tourism: The Case of Suwon Hwaseong in South Korea

“…Based on marginal utility theory [33], CE estimates the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for various attributes that affect the value of goods and services [34], and is one of the most used methods for estimating the value of tourism resources and tourism products [8]. Due to its advantage of being able to estimate the willingness to pay for each attribute that affects the value of tourism resources, CE has been used in various tourism studies [8,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

Going beyond Good Intentions for the Sustainable Conservation of Built Heritage: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Satisfaction is a common construct in the literature, used to assess visitors' experiences in the scope of marketing management on touristic destinations (e.g., [88][89][90][91]). Willingness-to-pay is used to analyse residents' and visitors' disposition to support the costs of the preservation of cultural and natural heritage, allowing to identify and prioritise values (e.g., [92][93][94][95][96]). The publications referring to segmentation studies aim at typifying profiles of tourists (e.g., [97][98][99][100]) or local communities [101] according to behavioural characteristics, such as motivation to visit heritage sites [101] or awareness of the World Heritage brand [102], for instance.…”