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

Abstract

Despite the increasing number of visitors to Galapagos National Park, the tourism industry pays little attention to the distinct preferences of tourists toward park attributes, including both its natural resources and managerial emphasis. To “monetize” the benefits of these attributes requires utilizing nonmarket valuation techniques. Using a stated preference questionnaire, we estimated the economic value of the park’s recreational attributes. The following five attributes were selected: endangered species, prevalence of garbage, site infrastructure, air quality, and entrance fees. The results of this study demonstrate that tourists place the highest willingness to pay values on increased protection of animal species (US$26.9) and garbage reduction (US$111.2). These results highlight the economic contributions for park management, with a potential for value improvement of US$38.1 per tourist if the park’s combined attributes are upgraded from the present condition to the optimum condition.

Is there room for a room‐tax in the Canary Islands?

“…In the case of tourism, discrete choice models have been applied in different areas (see the review by Crouch & Louviere, 2000); for example, to model individual preferences on attributes of the demand for tourism goods or services (Boto‐García, Mariel, Pino, & Alvarez, 2020; Chen, Masiero, & Hsu, 2019; Masiero, Heo, & Pan, 2015) the choice of destinations (Huybers, 2003), the environmental and recreational value of cultural or natural heritage (Lee, Mjelde, Kim, Lee, & Choi, 2019; Lupu, Padhi, Pati, & Stoleriu, 2020; Perez Loyola, Wang, & Kang, 2019), or the effects of certain policies, such as environmental conservation policies (see for example, Bocci, Sohngen, Lupi, & Milian, 2020; Xu et al, 2020). Nevertheless, Rosselló and Sansó (2017) noted two difficulties in applying choice models to assess the effect of a tax increase on the international demand for a tourist destination: (a) the use of the distance variable as an indicator of price, makes it impossible to analyse price increases as a result of the tax, and (b) the difficulty of having a representative sample of international tourists with information about alternative destinations.…”

Tourism Destination Management Strategy for Young Children: Willingness to Pay for Child-Friendly Tourism Facilities and Services at a Heritage Site

“…The CE is a stated preference-based methodology to estimate the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) using a multidimensional approach [ 53 ]. Since this method can estimate the MWTP for each attribute, such as tourism facilities and services, it has been used in various tourism studies to evaluate the preference of tourists [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. Therefore, CE was selected as the analysis method for understanding tourists’ preferences for child-friendly tourism facilities and services and developing a tourism destination management strategy for young children.…”

Assessing Tourism Carrying Capacity Based on Visitors’ Experience Utility: A Case Study of Xian-Ren-Tai National Forest Park, China

“…The total utility of visitors is the result of the joint action of multiple recreational attributes. CEM carries a higher information load, which helps to assess multiple attributes through a single experimental design [37,38].…”