Title : ( Data Mining Recreation Values and Effective Factors in Ecotourism Willingness to Pay: A Perspective from Iran's Parks )
Authors: Mahdi Kolahi , Tetsuro Sakai , Kazuyuki Moriya , Masatoshi Yoshikawa ,Access to full-text not allowed by authors
Abstract
Recreational planning, as well as applying various environmental projects and developing diverse recreational and leisure centers for people, are important issues in the macro and regional levels of management in every country. Ecotourism, as nature-based tourism with its special characteristics, is being considered as the impetus and economic investment for natural resources management. To help proper planning in this field, current research uses data mining from the recreation values of Iran’s parks and separating influential factors on visitors' willingness to pay (WTP). These estimations can be effective in foreseeing the needs, eliminating the shortages and developing the tourism in the parks. This study delves into the main findings of 31 researches that were applied to assess the recreation value of 33 different parks across Iran from 2004 to 2011. Those researches collected 9216 questionnaires in total. It was conducted using R software, and Rattle and latticist user interfaces to analyze gathered data and information. Results showed that 69% of respondents were male, 54% were married, 35% were employee and 33% business. The averages of age and academic years were 34.4 and 13.7, respectively. The mean household size was 3.74. Although the average respondent's’ monthly income and their household monthly income were US$403 and US$539, respectively, 73% of the visitors were willing to pay money to visit the parks. Variables of occupation, education levels, household size, marital status, and age had an effect on visitors' WTP for visiting, and variables of sex, income, education level, household size, marital status, and the service satisfaction rate affected the general rates of WTP. The average rate of WTP per person was estimated at US$1.4 and the average annual recreation value for each hectare of the parks was calculated at US$2313. The results show the parks have considerable entertainment value. This study provides justification for the decision to support the quality of Iran’s parks.
Keywords
, nature-based tourism, Ecotourism, economic assessment, environmental projects@inproceedings{paperid:1059645,
author = {Kolahi, Mahdi and Tetsuro Sakai and Kazuyuki Moriya and Masatoshi Yoshikawa},
title = {Data Mining Recreation Values and Effective Factors in Ecotourism Willingness to Pay: A Perspective from Iran's Parks},
booktitle = {Fourteenth annual international conference of Mapping the Global Future: Evolution Through Innovation and Excellence},
year = {2012},
location = {نیویورک, IRAN},
keywords = {nature-based tourism; Ecotourism; economic assessment; environmental projects},
}
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Data Mining Recreation Values and Effective Factors in Ecotourism Willingness to Pay: A Perspective from Iran's Parks
%A Kolahi, Mahdi
%A Tetsuro Sakai
%A Kazuyuki Moriya
%A Masatoshi Yoshikawa
%J Fourteenth annual international conference of Mapping the Global Future: Evolution Through Innovation and Excellence
%D 2012