Expenditure and ecotourism: predictors of expenditure for whale shark tour participants

Abstract

Whale shark tourism is an icon industry in Western Australia and a prominent example of successful ecotourism. In 2006, whale shark tour participants spent $6.0 million in the Ningaloo Coast region of Western Australia and added between $2.4 million and $4.6 million to the regional economy in direct expenditure. However, to date no research has been conducted on the predictors of whale shark tour participants' expenditure. In this article, we assess the importance of visitor expenditure for ecotourism, assess the predictors of the expenditure of whale shark tour participants and discuss how this information can contribute towards ecotourism goals. The data analysed here were collected through a survey distributed to participants between April and June 2006. We assess a range of variables for their relationship to individual expenditure per trip and determine that the duration of stay, household income, age, staying in a hotel, trip motivation and being from North America or Southeast Asia positively correlate with individual expenditure per trip. Group size and originating from Germany or the United Kingdom and Ireland negatively correlate with expenditure. In addition to identifying future steps, we also discuss the relevance of our finding that more motivated participants have a higher expenditure for ecotourism.

Keywords:

• ecotourism
• linear regression analysis
• regional economies
• visitor expenditure
• whale shark tourism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the generous support of the following organisations without which this research would not have been possible: Ecocean; Earthwatch Institute and in particular the hard work of Earthwatch volunteers and employees; the STCRC; the Curtin Sustainable Tourism Centre; the Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation for their cooperation and assistance; and the whale shark tourism industry at NMP for their cooperation and participation over a number of years.

Notes

The term ‘Ningaloo Coast region’ refers to the coast that runs from the town of Exmouth to the town of Coral Bay in the Coral Coast tourism region.

All figures are in Australian dollars.

At the time of publication, this article is in the reviewing process for an academic journal. The authors will provide information on this article if requested by email.

Using a 4-year rolling average reduces the chances of sampling errors.

TRA International and National Visitors Survey, 1999–2005.

A more detailed discussion of our methodology can be found in Catlin et al. (see Note 3).

Only three cases had a Mahalanobis distance greater than 8. The largest score was 11.530 that, while not ideal, was below the limit for a sample size of over 400 (Barnett & Lewis, 1978). Additionally, tests for Cook's distance were found to be satisfied. The model can therefore be said to be reasonably accurate and generalisable.

Tooman (1997) argues that limiting analyses to economic impacts follows a ‘classical’ method of assessing impact that ignores other changes, such as those on infrastructure, housing issues and the extent of local economic benefits from tourism growth.