Conservation finance and sustainable tourism: the acceptability of conservation fees to support the Tambopata National Reserve,Peru

Protected areas are key to the conservation of global biodiversity and ecosystem services; however, their success is contingent upon adequate funding. One possibility to increase funding for park management is to “sell” a wider suite of ecosystem services “produced” by protected areas, such as carbon sequestration. We conducted 420 tourist surveys to analyze willingness to pay (WTP) for ecosystem service benefits via a conservation fee in the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. We also interviewed eight tour operators about their perceptions of the proposed fee. The average stated WTP was 15 USD. Sixty-six percent of tourists stated they would pay 10 USD or more, which, if actually paid, would have resulted in 318,000 USD for park management in 2015. Most respondents stated they would pay an additional fee if it supported biodiversity conservation or local ecosystem services, such as water, but less than 10% of tourists were motivated by carbon sequestration as a reason to pay the fee. Most tour operators supported the additional fee. Our findings suggest that tourists are willing to pay higher fees to support conservation but that interest in paying for additional ecosystem services from parks may not extend to global and intangible benefits such as carbon sequestration.     

The effect of Facebook users’ arousal and valence on intention to go to the festival: Applying an extension of the technology acceptance model

The rapid development of social media has challenged event managers to rethink how this trend will shape traditional marketing practices. Given the rise of these technologies, the current breed of special event “fan” has started to take advantage of and venture into this social space for possible benefits. For event managers, the fundamental issue becomes how to uncover the process through which special event consumers come to accept social media marketing. This paper reviews social media marketing literature, the characteristics of event marketing, and highlights the emotional aspect of social media applications. An extended TAM (technology acceptance model) is adopted to explain the mechanism by which social media marketing influences attitudes toward Facebook event pages. The authors find that users’ emotions exhibited on the Facebook event page do have a significant impact on the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment of such social media marketing. However, only the last construct significantly influences users’ attitudes and intentions toward an event. Implications and insights were provided to event practitioners and were discussed accordingly.