Effects of tourists’ psychological perceptions and travel choice behaviors on the nonmarket value of urban ecotourism during the COVID-19 pandemic- case study of the Maokong region in Taiwan

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the global tourism industry and forced the industry to reevaluate methods for improving tourism quality and opportunities to develop sustainable and ecofriendly tourism. This paper uses an online questionnaire survey to investigate whether tourists who visited Maokong Region(in Taipei) before and after the pandemic would be more appreciative of the value of urban eco-tourism and be willing to increase their willingness to pay (WTP). Since the value of eco-tourism cannot be measured by market goods, this paper develops a Contingent Valuation Method and tests it by Negative Binomial Regression. The empirical results confirmed that the pandemic substantially affected tourists’ psychological perceptions and increased their willingness to pay for the value of ecotourism. The factors affecting the willingness to pay include frequency of visit, willingness to revisit, length of stay, acceptance of ecotourism, and ecotourism preference. Ecotourism plans for Maokong were proposed to fulfill tourists’ desire to travel during the pandemic and to mitigate the impact of tourist behaviors on natural environments. This paper attempts to quantify how the pandemic caused changes in people’s psychological perceptions and reflect this in terms of willingness to pay. Also, it proposes urban eco-tourism programs appropriate to the period of the pandemic. The results of this study may serve as a reference for countries promoting short-term, short-distance, and outdoor urban ecotourism and thereby achieve ecological protection, and physical and psychological health maintenance during the COVID-19 pandemic. These are the innovations and contributions of this paper.