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

Lishan Xu,Zhenyu Cai,Changlin Ao,Baoqi Liu

doi:10.1007/s13157-021-01515-5

Lishan Xu, Zhenyu Cai + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-021-01515-5

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Abstract

Tourist satisfaction, as a principal element for sustainable development of wetland ecotourism and destination competitiveness, has received extensive attention in the research on its impact on behavioral intention. This paper employs choice experiment to study tourist satisfaction as an important motivation for behavioral intention of willingness to pay and preference on wetland ecotourism improvement policy, and explores the potential causal mechanism. A 15-item scale is designed to measure tourist satisfaction and four constructs are defined. Under the framework of discrete choice modeling, unidimensional and multidimensional data are incorporated as the standard for population segmentation and explanatory variables. The empirical results estimated by three methods basically confirms the proposed hypotheses and indicate that tourist satisfaction has a certain effect on tourist preference of wetland ecotourism and there is significant preference heterogeneity among groups with different satisfaction. Besides, different dimensions of satisfaction have a different effect on tourist preference of wetland ecotourism. This study enriches the studies on non-market value evaluation and preference motivation in the field of ecotourism, because tourist satisfaction may explain some unobserved preference heterogeneity. More effective wetland ecotourism policies can be designed when data on satisfaction are included.

Highlights

Ecotourism is a special form of tourism in which tourists visit relatively undisturbed areas in order to learn and enjoy the natural landscape, wildlife and culture of the destination, while bringing economic and social benefits to the local community and contributing to the conservation of natural resources (Ceballos-Lascuráin 1996; Higgins 1996; Orams 1995)
The empirical results estimated by three methods basically confirms the proposed hypotheses and indicate that tourist satisfaction has a certain effect on tourist preference of wetland ecotourism and there is significant preference heterogeneity among groups with different satisfaction
The frequency distribution of the 15 satisfaction items was tested and the results show that the respondents are generally satisfied, but not all of the items have overwhelmingly positive responses

Summary

Introduction

Ecotourism is a special form of tourism in which tourists visit relatively undisturbed areas in order to learn and enjoy the natural landscape, wildlife and culture of the destination, while bringing economic and social benefits to the local community and contributing to the conservation of natural resources (Ceballos-Lascuráin 1996; Higgins 1996; Orams 1995). The rapid development of the industry has brought great challenges to the sustainable development of wetland ecotourism, including the protection of wetland biodiversity and landscape, as well as the provision of a high level of satisfaction with the travel experience for tourists (Oviedo-García et al 2019). It is extremely important for the sustainability of wetland ecotourism that managers understand how to achieve tourism objectives, such as tourist satisfaction (Valdivieso et al 2015). Tourist satisfaction is one of the main factors that constitute the competitiveness of a destination (Sarra et al 2015)

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