Willingness of Tourists to Pay for Ecotourism Services in Selected Ecotourism Destinations in South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

Quality ecotourism services provided at ecotourism destinations have great contributions to tourists’ willingness to pay for a certain service or products. One of the key challenges of ecotourism management is to set chargeable fees without ascertaining how much tourists are willing to pay.  Hence, this paper investigates willingness of tourists to pay for ecotourism services in selected ecotourism destinations in South-West, Nigeria using appropriate standard methods. Major findings showed that 40.0% of tourists were willing to pay more for services such as tour guides, 35.0% for food and drink, 27.1% for cultural and entertainment, 26.8% for recreation, 18.3% for merchant services, and 14.0% for accommodation at the destinations.Inferential test showed that there is no significant relationship between the visitor’s age (x²=8.382, p= 0.755), gender (x²=3.718, p= 0.715), marital status (x²= 6.301, p=0.900), education level (x²=3.811, p= 0.987), religion (x²= 2.729, p= 0.842), main occupation (x²= 8.639, p= 0.733), monthly income (x²= 17.063, p= 0.147) and household size (x²= 4.595, p= 0.597). There is significant relationship between the visitors nationality (x²=16.950, p= 0.009). The paper concludes that that destinations attributes, such as the attractiveness of the site and presence of ecotourism services are the major factors in determining tourists’ willingness to pay for ecotourism services in ecotourism destinations.This paper would guide not only the management of the ecotourism destinations, but also policymakers to consider the important market segment among the visitors with a view to encouraging the visitation of such a target group in order to create an avenue for enhancing revenue for ecotourism destinations.