Abstract
Turkey occupies eighth place in the world for cave tourism. In recent years, the development of the cave tourism industry throughout the country and the emergence of its positive and negative impacts have attracted the interest of rural development experts, local managers and scholars. Most research is related to scientific studies in caverns, but there has been insufficient study of the profiles of visitors, expenditure patterns and problems experienced by cave tourism destinations. The main aim of this study is to analyse the determinants of the expenditure of same-day visitors on cave tourism, the socio-economic characteristics of the tourists and their attitudes towards the Ballica Cave as a tourist destination. Data were collected from 598 visitors via a questionnaire survey. The double log function was used to determine visitor expenditure on cave tourism. The geographical position of the cave and characteristics of the visitors were taken into consideration when specifying the model. According to the findings, the effect of household income on visitor expenditure was positive but not significant. Distance, age, level of education and gender were important determinants of expenditure. In addition, the majority of respondents thought that the advertising of the Ballica Cave was inadequate. Relatives, friends and neighbours were the main information sources for visitors to the cave.
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