TY - JOUR

T1 - Which national park attributes attract international tourists? A Sri Lankan case study

AU - Suresh, Kanesh

AU - Wilson, Clevo

AU - Quayle, Annette

AU - Khanal, Uttam

AU - Managi, Shunsuke

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - This study assesses how and in what circumstances tourists’ perceived value of nature-based tourism (NBT) attributes differ among various types of national parks. A novel discrete choice experiment is used employing data collected from 343 international tourists in four national parks in Sri Lanka. We find that the improvements in frequency of large species’ encounters, habitat quality and proximity to encountered wildlife produce greater utility. A surprising finding is that tourists are shown to prefer to spend only a limited amount of time at national parks. They also tend to choose less-visited parks that have large mammals for which they would be willing to pay more compared to those national parks that are more frequently visited. Our article contributes to the empirical evidence that time is a key factor that determines the tourism destination choice and less-visited parks offer considerable potential for future growth of tourism.

AB - This study assesses how and in what circumstances tourists’ perceived value of nature-based tourism (NBT) attributes differ among various types of national parks. A novel discrete choice experiment is used employing data collected from 343 international tourists in four national parks in Sri Lanka. We find that the improvements in frequency of large species’ encounters, habitat quality and proximity to encountered wildlife produce greater utility. A surprising finding is that tourists are shown to prefer to spend only a limited amount of time at national parks. They also tend to choose less-visited parks that have large mammals for which they would be willing to pay more compared to those national parks that are more frequently visited. Our article contributes to the empirical evidence that time is a key factor that determines the tourism destination choice and less-visited parks offer considerable potential for future growth of tourism.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107187123&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85107187123&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/13548166211019865

DO - 10.1177/13548166211019865

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85107187123

JO - Tourism Economics

JF - Tourism Economics

SN - 1354-8166

ER -