Entrance Fee Research Articles

Tourists’ Preferences for Sustainable Tourism: The Case of Pok Tunggal Beach, Yogyakarta Indonesia

Tourists as the main actor in tourism industry play an essential role in achieving sustainable tourism. Tourist preference for physical environment and infrastructure development in the tourism destination can affect the achievement of sustainable tourism. This study aims at measuring tourist preference for sustainable tourism management and calculating the economic value of the tourism destination. For this purpose, the Pok Tunggal Beach tourist area in Yogyakarta Indonesia was considered as a case study site. A survey with 200 local tourists was conducted using the Choice Modeling (CM) technique to measure their preferences related to the development on the beach. This study found that tourists prefer to pay more fees to get better and more sustainable facilities. The economic value of the Pok Tunggal Beach is the amount of IDR 1,038,600 (USD 73.66). The main attributes in the destination, tourist's education, environmental awareness, and recreation costs are statistically significant in determining tourists' preferences. This study recommends Pok Tunggal beach quality improvement by considering the tourist preferences. This study also suggests a price for the entrance fees, not only to increase revenue but also to monitor and control the number of tourists who visit the beach.

Review on nano-electro-mechanical-system devices

Nano-electro-mechanical (NEMS) systems are compacted to be of dimension less than a micron by MEMS. Extremely high fundamental frequencies can be reached in this size regime while at the same time maintaining extremely elevated mechanical sensitivity (minute strength constant). This powerful mixture of attribute directly translate in to elevated strength sensitivities, ultra-low power operability's, and the capability to cause functional nonlinearities by very diffident controlling powers. Current paper addressed NEMS in this overview and will detail numerous of their stimulating original application. At the threshold for this new domain, however, there is a steep entry fee: modern innovation is key to realizing NEMS ' full potential. Some of the foundations of MEMS ' methods would obviously not usefully fit into the NEMS system. The main problem is the dimensions of the systems relative to the circuits in which they will be embedded, its excessive volume-to-surface ratio and its alternative “characteristic operating range.” These create some of the main challenges currently facing the development of NEMS. The majority of well-known of these is the requirement for: Very sensitive, elevated values of bandwidth dislocation transducer; unprecedented controls of quality of surface and adsorbents; new mode of capable Nano-scale actuations; and new surface as well as bulk Nano-machining approaches that are precise, robust and routinely reproducible.

The optimal entry fee-prize ratio in Tullock contests

We analyze a three-stage game where an organizer sets an entry fee for a Tullock contest event, and a finite population of homogeneous agents simultaneously decide whether to participate or not. We show that in the unique symmetric subgame perfect Nash equilibrium, the larger the population size, the lower the probability the agents enter the contest, but the organizer’s optimal entry fee-prize ratio could either increase or decrease with the population size. When the population size approaches infinity, the number of contestants converges to a Poisson distributed random variable.

Achieving Robust and Socially Acceptable Environmental Policy Recommendations: Lessons from Combining the Choice Experiment Method and Institutional Analysis Focused on Cultural Ecosystem Services

The reflection of ecosystem services in environmental policy has recently become a key aspect in solving environmental problems occurring as a consequence of their overburdening. However, decision makers often pay attention predominantly to results of quantitative (monetary valuation) methods. This article explores a new way of combining quantitative and qualitative methods that has proven to be a useful practice for achieving better environmental governance. We combine the (quantitative) choice experiment method and (qualitative) institutional analysis as full and equal complements. In our approach, the goal of qualitative institutional analysis is not to verify the adequacy of willingness-to-pay results but rather to better address cultural and social perspectives of society representatives. Such an approach increases the robustness of policy recommendations and their acceptance in comparison with isolated applications of both methods. To verify this general premise, both methods were applied in the territory of the Eastern Ore Mountains in the Czech Republic to capture preferences and attitudes of local stakeholders as well as tourists towards small-scale ecosystems. The results confirm that preference calculations regarding aesthetic values of ecosystems need to be complemented with facts about institutional settings and barriers in order to better address locally relevant recommendations for decision makers, such as the introduction of new economic instruments (e.g., local taxes or entrance fees). The findings of this study can also be considered for governance of larger local, common-pool resources such as (public) forests or protected areas.

User’s willingness to pay for natural environment conservation and protection with commitment

Using the commitment model, this study examines the effects of satisfaction, alternative choices, and investment scale about the environment would predict users' environmental commitments. Furthermore, this study also investigated the relationship between the commitment to environment and the willingness to pay for the environmental conservation at the particular natural site. A survey was conducted at Yangmingshan National Park. The data were collected from April to July 2019. The findings of the analysis suggested that satisfaction and investment scale had the significantly positive effects on the commitment to the environment; but the alternative choices had the significantly negative relationship with the commitment. However, the level of environmental commitment failed to predict the willingness to pay via the entrance fee for environment conservation and protection. The level of commitment did not mediate the effects of satisfaction, alternative choices, and investment scale in the environment on the willingness to pay more for the national park, which will require refinement in future research.

A Cross Sectional Analysis of Tourism Development and Social Development

The major objective of this study was to measure the association between various interventions and Chitral Gole National Park (CGNP) role in preservation of bio-diversity and socio-economic uplift. A sample size of 346 respondents was randomly selected from total population of 3326 from the 4 selected villages on the basis of close proximity. A conceptual framework including dependent variable social development and independent variable tourism development were taken. The data were analyzed through frequency and percentage distribution. Moreover, Chi-square test was applied to know the relationship between dependent and independent variables at bi-variate level. In bi-variate analysis a highly significant (P=0.000) relation was found between CGNP is main source of promoting tourism in Chitral,tourists do any impacts upon local community in terms of increased business activities, local culture is safeguarded despite influx of tourists in the area, tourism produced employment opportunities, and social development. Qualitative data supported the empirical findings, however tourism brings economic opportunities at micro and macro level, but unfortunately CGNP is not as satisfactory regarding generating income since its establishment. The government should ensure to make such polices pertaining to the entrance fee, provides accommodation services on payment to the tourists and to reserve the entrance fee or any other form of taxes to ensure CGNP to spend on self-sustaining basis by ensuring refinement in the procedures as well.

Valuing ecotourism in Bukit Merah Orang Utan Island, Malaysia based on visitors’ experience

Abstract. Mohd-Asri NF, Kamaluddin SN, Dharmalingam S, Idris WMR, Md-Zain BM. 2021. Valuing ecotourism in Bukit Merah Orang Utan Island, Malaysia based on visitors’ experience. Biodiversitas 22: 1543-1549. Ecotourism has been identified as one of the alternative ways of boosting a region's economic status and highlighting the necessity of a healthier tourism sector. Bukit Merah Orang Utan Island (BMOUI) is the only ex-situ conservation center promoting primate ecotourism on the Malay Peninsula. We conducted a primate ecotourism survey at BMOUI to determine six ecotourism expressive valuations for describing the quality of tourists’ visits to BMOUI and estimating tourist’s willingness to pay (WTP) in relation to the entrance fee. Surveys were completed by 100 randomly selected respondents aged at least 18 years. Likert scale items and Cronbach’s alpha were used in the data analyses. Six ecotourism experiences (hedonic, interaction, novelty, comfort, stimulation, and safety values) were further analyzed using statistical software. The results showed that visitors experienced moderate hedonic experience (44.8%), moderate interactive value (42.35%), moderate novelty value (42.5%), medium comfort value (42.5%), medium stimulation value (42.7%), and low security value (37.15%). In addition, the mean WTP, determined by the bidding process, was about RM54.90 per visitor for each visit. The findings of ecotourism experiences and the estimated price can provide important information to BMOUI administrators. This study will contribute indirectly to upgrading the level of awareness of primate conservation aspects among tourists, entrepreneurs, and locals.

What drives the helpfulness of online reviews? A deep learning study of sentiment analysis, pictorial content and reviewer expertise for mature destinations

Tourist destinations are increasingly affected by travel-related information shared through social media. Drawing on dual-process theories on how individuals process information, this study examines the role of central and peripheral information processing routes in the formation of consumers' perceptions of the helpfulness of online reviews of mature destinations. We carried out a two-step process to address the perceived helpfulness of user-generated content, a sentiment analysis using advanced machine-learning techniques (deep learning), and a regression analysis. The database was 2023 comments posted on TripAdvisor about two iconic Venetian cultural attractions, St. Mark's Square (an open, free attraction) and the Doge's Palace (which charges an entry fee). Using deep-learning techniques, with logistic regression, we first identified which factors influenced whether a review received a “helpful” vote. Second, we selected those reviews which received at least one helpful vote to identify, through linear regression, the significant determinants of TripAdvisor users' voting behaviour. The results showed that reviewer expertise is influential in both free and paid-for attractions, although the impact of central cues (sentiment polarity, subjectivity, pictorial content) differs for both attractions. Our study suggests that managers should look beyond individual ratings and focus on the sentiment analysis of online reviews, which are shown to be based on the nature of the attraction (free vs. paid-for).

Determinants of Tourist Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction on Tourism Village

Indonesia government established the development of tourism village as one of priority program. Until 2018, there are 1734 tourism villages in Indonesia. However, the increase of tourist visitation is not occurred evenly. Only several tourism villages are having high visitation rate, others are still struggling in competing with other tourism destinations. Previous study found that tourist satisfaction is leading on visit intention. Therefore, this study investigated factors determinant on tourist satisfaction and dissatisfaction of tourism village. A content analysis was adopted in this study by extracting of 464 tourist reviews that posted from January 2016 until October 2019. Data were collected from tourist review on TripAdvisor regarding nine tourism villages in Indonesia. NVivo 12 was used to analyse the data. The results revealed top 5 satisfaction determinant attributes: village landscape, friendliness local people, traditional building, traditional way of life, and village atmosphere. Meanwhile, dissatisfy tourist mention traditional souvenir, village atmosphere, village authenticity, village entrance fee, and the local people who become souvenir seller as the top 5 dissatisfaction attributes.

UNDERSTANDING VISITOR PREFERENCES IN OLD OYO NATIONAL PARK, NIGERIA

This study sheds light on visitors’ preferences in Old Oyo National Park (Nigeria) and how these preferences contributed to their travel experience. A total of 120 visitors were reached via convenience sampling employing questionnaire administration. Their preferences were measured with the aid of a Likert scale and choice cards. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and conditional logit specification for inferential statistics. The results revealed that entrance fees, availability of affordable chalet accommodation, wildlife viewing opportunities and visits to the relics of the old city wall of Oyo Ile were the significant site predictors of choosing the park as a preferred tourist destination. Easy access within the park and good staff courtesies also had high means of 4.21 and 4.16 respectively, demonstrating site features and hospitality services rendered lends credence to visitor decision on destination choice. The park management needs to continually research on attractions and make efforts at improving such to entice repeat visits. Keywords: Old Oyo National Park, Hospitality Services, Visitor Preferences, Site Features, Experiences

Equitable sharing of benefits from tiger conservation: Beneficiaries’ willingness to pay to offset the costs of tiger conservation

Costs of large predator conservation may not be equitably distributed among stakeholders; these include farming communities, tourism business owners and visitors. Financial redistribution mechanisms based on accrued benefits and costs of conservation require relevant data unavailable in many locations. To address this, a contingent valuation method identified willingness to pay (WTP) among national park visitors and connected tourism business owners. Both groups derive benefit from government-funded conservation policies. The study was conducted in Bardia and Chitwan National Parks, Nepal 2017–2018; two locations world-renowned for tiger conservation. Local and international park visitors (N = 387) provided WTP for ongoing conservation via additional park entry fees. Tourism business owners (TBOs; N = 74) proximate to the parks stated their WTP for compensation funding provided directly to farmers. The majority (65%) of park visitors were willing to pay extra to support conservation (sample mean US$ 20) while 85 percent of TBOs supported their payment of funds for compensating farming communities (sample mean annual contribution being US$ 156). Valid WTP regression modelling found that visitor WTP was predicted by international travel costsand environmental organization affiliation. For TBOs indicating WTP, the amount to pay was predicted by annual net income from the tourism business. Application of study data indicates US$ 25 average increase to visitor park fees would maximise revenue and contribute a further US$ 495,000 available for conservation activities. Similarly, a flat-rate tariff on TBOs at the mean WTP amount would contribute more than double the annual budget available for farmer compensation (providing approximately US$ 43,000). More generally, the study findings are informative for policy-makers seeking equitable conservation outcomes while maintaining viable populations of critically endangered wild tigers. They should however be interpreted with caution given limitations of the sampling frame and method of data elicitation. Regardless, any policy decision effects require careful scrutiny to ensure desired outcomes are realized.

Ancient town tourism and the community supported entrance fee avoidance – Xitang Ancient Town of China

ABSTRACT Ancient towns, embedded with traditional architecture, culture and life style, are popular tourism attractions worldwide. Tourism use often transforms residents’ living spaces into shared multi-functional spaces for residents and tourists, which imposes impacts to residents and complicates community and tourism relationships. Entrance fees are widely used as an economic strategy for destination management and benefit re-distribution, triggering changes in relationships with profound implications socially and culturally. A framework is proposed to map relationships between stakeholders and flows of tourism impacts among key stakeholders in ancient town tourism. Readily accessible to a large urban population in the eastern developed area of China, Xitang Ancient Town in Jiaxing City of Zhejiang Province is one of the most famous tourism ancient towns in China. A mixed-methods approach involving both onsite and offsite data collections is used to explore and explain the enduring community support for the avoidance of entrance fee payments by tourists at Xitang Ancient Town. Limited access to tourism benefits for residents adjacent to the ticketing area is identified as the underlying reason for this. Practical suggestions are made to enhance community participation and ensure equitable access to tourism benefits for Xitang and ancient towns in China and elsewhere.

An Optimal Management for Charging and Discharging of Electric Vehicles in an Intelligent Parking Lot Considering Vehicle Owner's Random Behaviors

Because of missing the stochastic behaviors and decisions of the electric vehicle (EV) owners during the definition of the structure of energy management for charging/discharging of EVs There has always been a flaw in their schedule. These random behaviors affect the exchanged information between EV owners and the information center of the parking lot such as arrival and departure time, initial and final State of Charge (SOC) of EV, battery capacity, and demand hourly charge rate. Considering these stochastic behaviors of EV owners in operational scheduling in intelligent parking lots (IPLs) is the main goal of this article. Firstly by defining the random behavior of EV owners and other real situations, the modeling of the charging and discharging plan for electric vehicles with the aim of maximizing parking profit and minimizing costs for EV owners is presented. Then by determining penalties for faulty EV owners and the initial entrance fee for all vehicles, and also considering flexibility when defining the fines, a complete structure of energy management for EVs in IPLs is presented. These fines are such that, the smart money for EVs that cannot achieve their rights for charging, is paid by the penalties for faulty EV owners, and also make some profits for the IPLs. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated during three different scenarios in the simulation, and the results show the good performance of this enhanced strategy for the management of EVs.

‘Elephant Watching’ for Mitigating Human-Elephant Conflict: A Case Study in Sri Lanka

The ongoing Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) in Sri Lanka results in the death of more than 300 elephants every year. Although HEC mitigation plans are in place, the mitigation measures are not always implemented due to fund limitations. In the present study, the visitor demand for HEC mitigation strategies as the visitors’ willingness to pay a conservation tax at park level has been estimated which could be used for implementing HEC mitigation measures to conserve elephants in the wild. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted at three national parks presenting different options for mitigating HEC. The study found LKR 112.11, LKR 85.38 and LKR 95.37 (1USD = LKR 180) as the maximum conservation tax that visitors were willing to pay for conserving elephants at the Minneriya (MNP), Wasgamuwa (WNP), and Udawalawe (UNP) National Parks which are located in the North Central, Central and Southern Provinces, respectively, in Sri Lanka. These economic values constitute useful and reliable information for policy makers in determining appropriate entrance fees for visitors to national parks including a conservation tax for mitigating HEC.

On the Optimality of Small Research Tournaments

I study two open questions concerning optimal tournament size in Fullerton and McAfee's (1999) model of research tournaments with heterogeneous contestants. For the case where firms' costs are commonly known prior to the tournament and the procurer can charge non-discriminatory entry fees, I prove a sharp, worst-case bound for the ratio between the cost of procuring a given total effort from the optimal number of contestants and the corresponding cost for a tournament of size two. The analysis confirms the attractiveness of the smallest possible tournament, with some notable exceptions. I then describe the problem of inducing a given expected total effort at the lowest expected cost, by choosing the optimal combination of prize and tournament size, when firms are privately informed about their i.i.d. marginal costs prior to the tournament and a set of lowest-cost contestants is selected by an entry auction. I show that this problem can be solved in closed form when marginal costs are uniformly distributed on [0,c], and that the result for this case strongly favors the smallest possible tournament.

On the optimality of small research tournaments

A central result in Fullerton and McAfee’s (1999) analysis of fixed-prize research tournaments shows that if firms’ heterogeneous marginal effort costs are publicly known and the procurer can charge non-discriminatory entry fees, restricting entry to the two most efficient firms is optimal under a (fairly restrictive) sufficient condition on the form of heterogeneity. This note provides a complementary result. I prove a sharp, worst-case bound (across all linear cost structures) for the ratio between the cost of procuring a given total effort from the optimal number of contestants and the corresponding cost for a tournament featuring only the two most efficient firms. The analysis confirms the attractiveness of the smallest possible tournament, with some notable exceptions.

Tourist Preferences for Seamount Conservation in the Galapagos Marine Reserve

Seamounts provide oases of hard substrate in the deep sea that are frequently associated with locally enhanced biological productivity and diversity. There is now increasing recognition of their ecological and socio-economic importance. However, management strategies for these habitats are constrained not only by limited ecological understanding but by the general public’s understanding of the pressures facing these ecosystems. This study adds to the growing literature on willingness to pay for conservation of deep-sea ecosystems and species by undertaking a stated preference survey to assess tourist’s awareness of seamounts and their preferences for protection within the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Visitors’ perceptions of seamount biodiversity must be studied because tourists are key drivers of the Galapagos economy and account for 41% of the Marine Reserve budget. Our survey captured the attitudes, perceptions and willingness to pay of tourists for an increase in the entrance fee to the Galapagos Marine Reserve. Results showed tourists were willing to pay on average US$48.93 in addition to existing entrance fees. The results of this study support the willingness to develop a multiuse management plan for the Galapagos Marine Reserve, balancing conservation, local communities livelihoods and sustainable tourism. Our results evidence a willingness to support and fund conservation, which is of critical importance to both the Galapagos National Park and local non-governmental organizations heavily reliant for their work on entrance fees and donations respectively. Overall, the conclusion from this study is that, despite limited knowledge, visitors of the Galapagos Islands attach positive and significant values to the conservation of seamount biodiversity.

To fee or not to fee? Satisfaction, service quality, and support of an entrance fee of a state park system

In the past decade, state government appropriation reductions have forced park agencies to seek other sources of revenue to support park operations. To overcome shrinking budgets, many public park agencies embrace private-sector business models and investigate customer satisfaction, service quality, and user fee structures. The purpose of this study was to obtain public input regarding service quality, general satisfaction, and experience use history of state park visitation. A total of 382 Oklahoma state park users completed an online survey and were sorted into Pro-Fee (n = 200, 52%) and No-Fee (n = 182, 48%) groups for one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) tests. The researchers found a significant difference between the two groups on service quality, but not on overall satisfaction or behavioral intention (e.g., revisit, recommending the park). When comparing Pro-Fee and No-Fee groups, researchers found no statistically significant variance in visitors’ demographics, such as gender, education level, and income, whereas the number of years that had passed since the visitors’ first visit showed a significant difference between the groups. The findings of this study provide valuable insight for discussions related to entrance fees and service fees in state park systems.

Understanding preferences for pricing policies in Japan’s national parks using the best–worst scaling method

This study attempts to analyze Japan’s pricing policy alternatives for protected area management by assessing the general public’s preferences through best–worst scaling. Through best–worst scaling, researchers can quantitatively understand people’s preferences with fewer burdens. The conditional logit model showed that the mean response of the respondents placed a relatively high value on strategies for a “general entrance fee,” “fees for use,” and “licenses and permits.” All these ways of collecting fees are compulsory. However, an outcome of the latent class model revealed a segment of the population that deemed “voluntary fees” to be the most desirable form of making a contribution. Compared with evaluation via a Likert scale, employing the best–worst scaling method avoided response biases and provided deeper findings through choice probabilities.

Visitor perception of Tokyo’s parks’ attributes: an analysis of the textual reviews

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the satisfaction of urban park attributes of local residents and foreign tourists. By analyzing textual reviews generated by local (n = 490) and overseas visitors (n = 494) to five large urban parks in Tokyo (Japan), this study identified nine key attributes that were frequently mentioned about the parks. Among these attributes, ‘cherry trees’ was the most popular and frequently mentioned one. Although it was similarly perceived by both overseas and local visitors, this attribute was better recalled in the spring than in any other season. In addition, ‘entrance fee’ was mentioned and accepted favourably by more of the overseas visitors, while park size was referred to more by the local citizens (either neutral/mixed or positive). Based on these findings, theoretical and practical implications of this study, and directions for future research are proposed.