Comparing The Assessment Of Tourism Value With CVM Between The Natural And Cultural Heritage

The assessment of tourism recourses has been paid more attention in recent years, with the deep understanding of the recourse value and the rapid development of tourism. World heritage is becoming important tourist destination, because of its unique culture valuation and distinctive natural recourses. While most of them are feeing with the difficulties of protecting and developing because of its vulnerability. Scientific assessment of its tourism value plays a significant rote in realizing people’s perception of the heritage, knowing tourism development status of the heritage site, and directing the managers to making administrative decisions. This paper taking the Stone Forest in Yunnan(SFY) and the Old Town of Lijiang(OTL) as cases, referencing natural and cultural heritage, both of which are on the UNESCO World Heritage List, using contingent valuation method (CVM) assess their tourism value. By comparing the Respondents’ WTP (willingness to pay) of the cases, the study analysis the causes and the different influence factors, in order to find out the perception differences of tourism value between natural and cultural heritage. By comparing the CVM implementation and results, this paper discusses the systemic differences and its applicability when estimating the tourism value of cultural heritage sites.This article constructed hypothetical valuating markets for the two cases; then collected939valid questionnaires by face-to-face investigation. After calculates the sample average WTP of Stone Forest in Yunnan and the Old Town of Lijiang, the study reckons the domestic tourism value of SFY and OTL in2013, which are Y976.64 million and￥2789.36million on2013, taking the tourist amount of the two cases on the same year as the overall samples.After comparing the process and results, the study finds that:(1) there are systemic differences between natural and cultural tourism valuing, those are embodied in inspection process, such as building hypothetical markets; results; WTP influence factors, such as personal preference on scenic type and knowing about eco-tourism; and all above these are based on the disparity of resource properties.(2) the results reflects that people’s recognizing level about tourism value of natural heritage is higher than the cultural heritage’s.The study also finds that:1) CVM can be used in assessing tourism value of cultural heritage;2) to ensure results validity, we should make adjustments on information collecting, sample size interviewing, etc.