Understanding Public Preferences for Development of a Heritage Tourism Corridor: A Choice Experiment Approach

Development and management of heritage tourism attractions pose several challenges, such as conserving heritage under limited financial resources. Heritage sites or attractions often include numerous attributes (e.g., education, guided tours) that can be provided at various levels. However, the financial constraints of heritage tourism sites inhibit the ability to implement every preference of visitors and potential visitors. The purpose of this study is to identify and compare the preferences of visitors and non-visitors for the improvement of management programs and services of the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor using a choice experiment (CE). Users and non-users indicated some different preferences for the development options. As agencies seek to develop programs and services that will increase total visitation, both groups are important to assess to satisfy current visitors so they will be repeat visitors, as well as implement programs and services that offer the best opportunity to convert non-visitors to visitors

ESTIMATING TOURISTS\u27 ECONOMIC VALUES OF PUBLIC BEACH ACCESS POINTS

As the population and per capita income of the United States continues to increase, opportunities for individuals to participate in travel and tourism related activities are likely to multiply as well. Coastal tourism destinations anticipate this increase in travel will result in the need to retain and provide additional public access to coastal resources. Pogue and Lee (1999) indicate that tourism and recreational needs assessments are essential to determining how to meet the growing demand for public beach access. Determining the amount of scarce public funds to be spent on maintaining and acquiring public access locations to coastal resources is dependent upon economic benefits measured by individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for these resources. To estimate beach visitors’ economic value (or consumer surplus) from consuming services of additional provision of beach access points, double-bounded (DB) CVM questions were used to discover the amount visitors were willing to pay per day in excess of their actual trip costs associated with their beach experience. When the values are understood as net benefits accrued from their beach experiences, in general, average visitors are willing to pay $8.3 more above the current cost. Total net WTP at the population level was$58.3 million from development and maintenance of additional beach access points with parking spaces and other preferred facilities. As the new acquisition of beach access points is high-priced, the precise estimation of visitors’ benefits accrued from provision of beach access points is indispensable to more effective management decisions and policies