Valuing forest park attributes by giving consideration to the tourist satisfaction

Abstract

Despite the economic valuation of forest park resources has triggered a great deal of interest to the research community and park management, up to now no attention has been paid to the effect of psychological factors such as tourist satisfaction, which could potentially play a considerable role in contributing to the park resource valuation. This article attempts to fill this niche by carrying out a study on the economic valuation of the Xian-Ren-Tai National Forest Park in China, taking consideration of the tourist satisfaction. In the process, the choice experiment survey was used for data collection. Then, both conditional logit (CL) and random parameter logit models were used in parameter estimations to examine the factors that could potentially impact on the tourists’ willingness to pay. Results indicate that the tourists attach the greatest importance to the park’s natural environment and traffic conditions, and yet the level of tourists’ satisfaction on their tourism experience plays a big part in explaining the valuation results. Tourists who uphold a high level of satisfaction tend to pay more for the park attribute improvement than those with less satisfaction ones. The estimated compensating variation of the overall current park attributes has reached ¥184.95 per person per trip, of which 12.83% shall be attributable to the tourist satisfaction.

Exploring the Influence of Multidimensional Tourist Satisfaction on Preferences for Wetland Ecotourism: A Case Study in Zhalong National Nature Reserve, China

“…This inference is consistent with the conclusion in the social psychology literature that tourist satisfaction is strongly linked to tourists' perception or subjective feeling (Manning 2003), and thus affects tourists' behavioral intention (Ajzen 1991). Some studies have found that willingness to pay (WTP) is greatly affected by satisfaction (Kang et al 2018), and its stated preference reveals a behavioral intention. This kind of behavioral intention can be re ected by discrete choice modeling, potentially revealing unobservable preference heterogeneity (McFadden and Train 2000).…”

“…Except for the NUM attribute, the higher the tourist satisfaction, the higher the WTP, especially for the BIO attribute. This result partly supports the hypothesis H1 and fully supports H2, which indicates that tourists with higher satisfaction are more inclined to pay more for improving wetland ecotourism than tourists with lower satisfaction (Kang et al 2018).…”

“…There are few studies on the psychological factors such as tourist satisfaction, especially when it is measured as a multidimensional attribute. Kang et al (2018) evaluated forest park attributes by considering the tourist satisfaction as a single dimension through 5 items. León et al (2015) explored the effect on preferences among different groups by incorporating different aspects of satisfaction with national park in the choice modeling, but each aspect of satisfaction was measured by using a single item.…”

Economic valuation of recreational attributes using a choice experiment approach: An application to the Galapagos Islands

“…Recreational values refer to the WTP for characteristics found in protected areas such as national parks and nature reserves, which produce a wide range of goods and services that are of merit to tourists (Bennett, 1996). Unfortunately, to date there is not a universally accepted method to effectively monetize the recreational attributes of national parks (Kang et al, 2018). However, two dominant methods have been broadly used in valuing nonmarket resources including recreational resources and activities.…”

“…GNP management lacks information on the economic value of the park’s main attributes (De Groot, 1983). Thus, identifying visitors’ preferences toward various park attributes will play a significant role in setting an effective park entrance fee policy (Kang et al, 2018). Setting proper park admission fees is one of the most important instruments for effective park management (Pedersen, 2004), especially for emerging economies (Wilson and Tisdell, 2004).…”