Assessing Tourists’ Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Artificial Beach Park Development and Management: A Choice Experiment Method

Abstract

Artificial beaches have made a significant contribution to the expansion of coastal tourism. Obtaining information on tourists’ preferences for artificial beach tourism can help managers to better balance the relationship between the satisfaction of recreational needs and environmental protection. The Meishan Bay Beach Park in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China was used as the study site, and the tourists’ preferences for the artificial beach park development and management were evaluated using the choice experiment method. The results revealed that tourists were generally more interested in improving the governance level of the existing landscape than in further expanding the scale of artificial beach development. Among all attributes, significantly reducing the amount of garbage was the most preferred attribute, with a willingness to pay of 39.75 CNY, while willingness to increase beach area was the lowest attribute. The result of the preference heterogeneity analysis showed that tourists with higher education levels were more willing to pay to obtain a better recreational experience, while local tourists were more concerned about reducing congestion. Moreover, we found a clear and relevant segmentation of tourists’ choice behavior, with the strong sensitivity for raising the ticket price being driven by the smallest group of the sample.