Agricultural Economics Commons^™

Assessing Tourists’ Preferences For Recreational Trips In National And Natural Parks As A Premise For Long-Term Sustainable Management Plans, Diana E. Dumitras, Iulia C. Muresan, Ionel M. Jitea, Valentin C. Mihai, Simona E. Balazs, Tiberiu Iancu

Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

Sustainable tourism management plans rely on relevant and consistent information about factors that can influence the decision to visit a protected area. This paper uses the choice experiment method to investigate tourists’ preferences with regard to recreational trip characteristics in national and natural parks in Romania. An on-site survey questionnaire was administered to visitors. The multinomial logit model was employed to investigate the preference orderings of the identified groups of recreational users. Overall, results indicate that tourists gain benefits after visiting the parks. Main preference differences were found for information sources and location of campsites. Visitors who stated that the …