 Identifying and mapping forest-based ecotourism areas in West Virginia – Incorporating visitors' preferencesIshwar Dhami, Jinyang Deng, Robert C. Burns and Chad Pierskalla Tourism Management, 2014, vol. 42, issue C, 165-176 Abstract: This study identifies and maps forest-based ecotourism areas in West Virginia by incorporating visitors' preferences. Relative weights for ecotourism destination criteria were obtained using the Analytic Hierarchy Process based on a survey of 777 participants. The study classified the state into five levels of naturalness with areas under Class I being the least natural and Class V being the most natural. The presence of wildlife was found to be the most important criterion and slope was found to be the least. Results also showed significant variations in visitors' preferences. Areas under Class IV and Class V in both weighted and unweighted ecotourism maps covered more than half of the state's area, suggesting high prospects for promoting forest-based ecotourism in the state. The results further showed that each class changed in size when visitors' preferences were applied. The ecotourism maps created provide useful insights for visitors, destination managers, and decision makers. Keywords: Forest-based ecotourism; Naturalness continuum; Geographic information system; Analytic Hierarchy Process; Pairwise comparison; Criteria weight; Visitors' preferences; Suitability index (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:42:y:2014:i:c:p:165-176 DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2013.11.007 Access Statistics for this article Tourism Management is currently edited by Chris Ryan More articles in Tourism Management from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.