Estimating the recreational value of Pakistan's largest freshwater lake to support sustainable tourism management using a travel cost model

Keenjhar Lake, Pakistan's largest freshwater lake and an important Ramsar site, provides habitat for internationally important water birds. Annually, 385,000 people visit the lake. The lake is threatened by a variety of causes, including industrial and agricultural pollution. To support its sustainable management and conservation, the lake's recreational value is estimated using an individual travel cost model. Randomly selected visitors are interviewed during peak season about their recreational travel behavior and perception of lake conditions. Key issues in travel cost modeling are addressed, including the opportunity cost of time, group travel, substitution and income effects, and endogenous stratification and truncation due to on-site sampling. Poisson and negative binomial regression models produce similar results. We find significant over-dispersion, and therefore, use the more conservative truncated negative binomial model results to estimate consumer surplus. The value of this assessment method for resource managers is illustrated by comparing the consumer surplus with existing pricing and budgeting mechanisms. The annual flow of benefits from lake recreation appears to be almost 50 times higher than the average entrance fee paid by the predominantly higher-income segments visiting the lake, suggesting scope for increasing fees and reallocating government budgets to finance the necessary lake protection measures.     

Negotiating leisure constraints: the case of an amateur musician with epilepsy

The purpose of this case study was to identify the negotiation strategies employed by an epileptic amateur musician engaged in serious leisure to overcome leisure constraints. Data were collected by semi-structured interview, observation and informal interaction. Results revealed that the subject employed various cognitive (i.e. anticipating benefits, weighing pros and cons, immediate resolving, accepting costs and pragmatism about performance) and behavioural (i.e. planning/event management, scaling back participation and communication and cooperation) negotiation strategies. While strategies were employed to overcome constraints, participation was also facilitated by individual beliefs and interpersonal relationships. Results also suggested that negotiation strategies are interconnected, and that perceived stigma did not influence participation in serious leisure.     

Leisure as a Coping Resource: Variations in Coping with Traumatic Injury and Illness

The influence of leisure in coping with negative life events likely derives from its powers to distract, to generate optimism about the future, and to preserve a sense of self in the face of trauma (Kleiber, Hutchinson, & Williams, 2002). While there is recent evidence of leisure's role in coping with daily hassles and normative life stressors (e.g., Iwasaki & Mannell, 2000), the nature and extent of leisure's utility in coping with a life-altering event, such as a traumatic injury, is not well understood. The purpose of this paper is to examine how individuals used leisure in coping with a traumatic injury or the onset of a chronic illness. Qualitative data from two studies involving people with either a spinal cord injury or chronic illness were used for this analysis. Findings support suggestions from earlier research: leisure served to buffer effects of immediate life circumstances and it sustained their coping efforts in various ways. The authors end by discussing the data in light of recent theoretical propositions about the role of positive affect and meaning in coping.     

Leisure as a Resource in Transcending Negative Life Events: Self-Protection,Self-Restoration,and Personal Transformation

Negative life events, such as the unexpected loss of a loved one, a disabling accident or a natural disaster, are inevitably distressing and disruptive. Coping with and recovering from such events generally requires a variety of personal and social resources. Previous research on leisure and coping has suggested that leisure orientations and relationships can be important in reducing the likelihood that stress becomes debilitating in some way. But the results of that work are equivocal and generally do not distinguish leisure resources that make events less stressful from those that are employed in coping with stressful events after they occur. This analysis examines the leisure-coping literature as well as recent work on the dynamics of coping and the impact of pleasant events and concludes in identifying four distinguishable functions of leisure that relate to self-protection, self-restoration, and personal transformation.     

The functional-psychological continuum in the cognitive image of a destination: A confirmatory analysis

This paper analyses the cognitive component of the image of a destination from a dual perspective. Firstly, we study its composition by positing three positions on a continuum: functional, mixed and psychological, which are analysed using confirmatory factor analysis. Secondly, we study the influence of these components on tourists' overall image of the destination and on their future behaviour intentions, using structural equation analysis. The results show that the psychological and functional components exercise the greatest influence on the overall image of the destination. Overall image was found to influence future behaviour intentions consistently, while the functional component is relevant for revisit intention and the psychological component for the intention to recommend.     

Leisure consumption in cricket: devising a model to contrast forms and time preferences

A large body of research exists on the motivation to follow sporting and leisure events. However, the main focus of these studies has been on those who attend events (direct consumers). Little research has extended the investigation of sporting and leisure consumption to include those who consume sport by other means such as the media (indirect consumers) and their scheduling preferences. With the growth of indirect consumption and its importance from both a finance and marketing perspective, this is an area of increasing interest in sports and leisure management. The purpose of this paper is to examine the consumption of sport in the UK and time and form preferences of spectators. We develop and validate a four-dimensional model to measure spectators’ consumption, empirically testing it using 632 questionnaires in the context of cricket. Our findings show that although there was a stronger preference for direct consumption, there was a greater engagement in indirect consumption forms. A number of these activities, such as following the sport on the Internet are peripheral to the actual game and complement consumption of the match. A further finding of the research was that weekend consumption was most favoured by those who were more involved in the sport as club members. They expressed a stronger preference for Friday evening and Sunday scheduling for two different competitions.     

Servicescape and shopping value: the role of negotiation intention,social orientation,and recreational identity at the Istanbul Grand Bazaar,Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the influence of negotiation intention, recreational shopper identity, and social shopping orientation on both servicescape and visitors’ overall shopping value in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar, Turkey. We developed and tested a conceptual model using a sample of 300 international visitors to the Bazaar. The results demonstrate that bargaining intention, recreational functions, and social interactions influence servicescape. This implies that, when tourists are motivated by bargain hunting, recreation, and socialisation, their attitude towards the shopping environment is more positive, which subsequently results in increased overall shopping value. Implications for managerial practice are also presented alongside suggestions for future research.     

An evaluation of recreational benefits and tribal tourism development for aboriginal villages after post-disaster reconstruction - a case study of Taiwan

This study investigates two sites suffering severe damage from typhoon Morakot. It utilizes the travel cost method to measure the average recreational benefits of compensation variation and equivalent variation per person, and it evaluates whether there are causal relationships among tourists’ recreational experiences, perceived values, and revisit intentions. The outcomes demonstrate that most tourists assign high recreational values to natural and socio-cultural resources. However, a further analysis of the tangible benefits indicates that the amount of income received remains low. Tourists have difficulties nurturing an immediate revisit intention here, even when they are satisfied with their experiences.     

The sustainability behaviour of small firms in tourism: the role of self-efficacy and contextual constraints

This article presents a grounded theory to explain why some small businesses in tourism adopt sustainable business practices while others do not, even when they share environmental and wider sustainability concerns. It does so based on research undertaken among business owners in Crete. The paper starts by considering studies on sustainability awareness, knowledge and the mechanisms for accepting responsibility. Secondly, it summarises the influence of task difficulty and effort on sustainability self-efficacy. Thirdly, it focuses on social comparisons and vicarious experiences, as a way of learning what is important. Finally, it examines powerlessness due to perceived situational constraints. In so doing, the study finds that self-efficacy helps to explain sustainable attitude formation and the attitude-behaviour gap; it partly shifts the locus of responsibility for an inability to act sustainably away from the individual and towards their context. The paper contributes to the theoretical literature on small businesses and sustainability, and leads to new avenues for policy interventions.     

Factors influencing destination image and visit intention among young women travellers: role of travel motivation,perceived risks,and travel constraints

There is literature detailing the effects of travel motivation, risks perceptions, and travel constraints on the destination image and travel behaviour of individuals. However, literature explaining these factors in the context of prospective young women travellers is scarce. This study empirically tests a comprehensive model of prospective young women’s travel behaviour, based on cognitive and affective perceptions about destination, travel motivations, perceived risks, and travel constraints. A quantitative study was performed on 370 young university women in Malaysia. The results revealed that the travel motivation of young women has positive effects on the cognitive and affective image, whereas the dimensions of perceived travel risks and travel constraints have negative effects on cognitive and affective destination images. The results also found that cognitive and affective images positively influence the visit intention of prospective young women travellers.