The Construction and Validation of a Sustainable Tourism Development Evaluation Model.

Han-Shen Chen

doi:10.3390/ijerph17197306

Abstract

As climate change, food crises, sustainable development, and ecological conservation gain traction, the revival of traditional fishing villages has become an important governmental policy for Taiwan. To reduce cognitive bias, the choice experiment method was applied to construct an attribute function in fishing village tourism coupled with virtual reality headsets. Conditional logit and random parameter logit models were employed to estimate tourism utility functions. Moreover, a latent class model was employed to determine whether hetxerogeneous preferences regarding fishing village travel existed. The sampling sites were distributed across the Dongshi area. In total, 612 tourists and 170 local residents were interviewed. After incomplete questionnaires were removed, 816 valid questionnaires remained, representing 95.83% of the total questionnaires. Older residents and residents with shorter histories of education were inclined to increase land development and utilization by reducing natural landscapes; tourists preferred preserving landscapes and preventing land development. Residents with more education believed that local landscape imagery was essential. Tourists who were more educated, with high incomes, and those who were older believed that a selling platform incorporating local industries and products within the villages would be attractive for other tourists.

Highlights

Taiwan is a typical island country with 224 fishing ports
The conditional logit (CL) model showed that tourists and local residents had noticeable preferences in the designated tourism attributes
To further examine the differences in preferences between the groups of respondents, this study employed an random parameter logit (RPL) model to analyze the differences in fishing village attribute preferences of tourists and local residents and estimate related essences affecting each attribute

Summary

Introduction

Taiwan is a typical island country with 224 fishing ports. Fishing villages clustered around the ports as corresponding industries have flourished. Law of the Sea, the fishery economy witnessed a decline The prosperity of these villages has contracted because of the dearth of employment opportunities, further engendering the emigration of young residents and leaving behind a largely aging population in the fishing communities. The rural and remote nature of these villages, coupled with dated public facilities and constructions, only further exacerbates the problem. To increase their value, agricultural and fishing villages across the globe actively explore solutions for the socioeconomic problems that they encounter. Keeping in mind the increasing significance of issues such as global climate change, food crises, sustainable development, and ecological conservation, the revival of fishing villages with traditional features becomes an important policy for the government

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion