Estimating the Economic Value of Soundscapes in Nature-Based Tourism Destinations: A Separation Attempt of a Pairwise Comparison Method

Ke Wu, Peixue Liu and Zhenghu Nie
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Ke Wu: School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Peixue Liu: School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Zhenghu Nie: School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-23

Abstract: Recent soundscape research is notable owing to the increasing demand for “multisensory” tourism experiences. However, the traditional economic value assessment of tourism destinations mostly takes each type of landscape as a whole for measurement, and it has been challenging to separate the soundscape from the whole landscape. Therefore, research on the economic value of soundscapes is still lacking. This study chose the characteristic soundscape of the Qiantang River tide as the research object, and tried to apply the pairwise comparison method to calculate the separation coefficient of the soundscape from the overall landscape. The results showed that the separation coefficient of the soundscape was 0.138 and the economic value of the Qiantang River tide soundscape was between CNY 315.145 million (USD 48.7 million) and CNY 333.841 million CNY (USD 51.6 million). Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of the separation methods, the differences in willingness to pay between the interviewees, and the sustainable use of the natural soundscape resources in tourism destinations.

Keywords: soundscape; landscape value; pairwise comparison method; travel cost interval analysis (TCIA); contingent valuation method (CVM); willingness to pay; Qiantang River tide (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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