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Factors Affecting the Willingness of Tourists to Visit Cultural Heritage Sites in Jordan

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Factors Affecting the Willingness of Tourists to Visit Cultural Heritage Sites in Jordan Journal of Heritage Tourism ISSN: 1743-873X (Print) 1747-6631 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjht20 Factors affecting the willingness of tourists to visit cultural heritage sites in Jordan Ismaiel Naser Abuamoud, James Libbin, Janet Green & Ramzi ALRousan To cite this article: Ismaiel Naser Abuamoud, James Libbin, Janet Green & Ramzi ALRousan (2014) Factors affecting the willingness of tourists to visit cultural heritage sites in Jordan, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 9:2, 148-165, DOI: 10.1080/1743873X.2013.874429 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743873X.2013.874429 Published online: 20 Jan 2014. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 290 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjht20 Download by: [Jordan Univ. of Science & Tech] Date: 05 April 2016, At: 01:55 Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2014 Vol. 9, No. 2, 148–165, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743873X.2013.874429 Factors affecting the willingness of tourists to visit cultural heritage sites in Jordan ∗ Ismaiel Naser Abuamouda , James Libbinb, Janet Greenc and Ramzi ALRousand aDepartment of Tourism Management, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan; bCollege of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA; cSchool of Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management (HRTM), New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA; dDepartment of Sustainable Tourism, Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan (Received 31 January 2012; accepted 5 December 2013) This study examined the factors affecting the willingness of tourists to visit the cultural heritage sites (CHS) located in the Northern Badia of Jordan, and estimated expenditures for their visit to the CHS. A questionnaire was developed to collect demographic and economic information about tourists during their visit to Jordan. Three hundred tourists were included in the survey at nine different sites during the summer of 2010. A logistic regression model was employed in the analyses. Factors that affected tourism at CHS included: education, variety of sites, multiple destinations, cost, and reasons for the visit. These factors had a significant impact on tourists’ willingness to travel to CHS in the Northern Badia. This study recommends improving CHS and working closely with local communities to expand training and funding. Keywords: heritage tourism; economic development; Jordan; Bedouin; logistic model Introduction The economic benefits derived from tourism are tremendous and therefore often provide an attractive form of economic development through improving local communities’ economic situations by creating new jobs, new investments, and increasing government earnings through foreign exchange (Chandler & Costello, 2002). Worldwide growth in the tourism industry was recorded as one of the most significant achievements over the last 50 years with an annual growth rate of 9%, generating 10% of the global gross domestic Downloaded by [Jordan Univ. of Science & Tech] at 01:55 05 April 2016 product (GDP) (Honey & Krantz, 2007; Yeoman & Lederer, 2005). According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) annual reports, worldwide arrivals grew by 5.5% in 2006. The Middle East attained the highest growth rate between 2000 and 2006 of 9%. It has been estimated that the Middle East will achieve an annual growth rate of 7.1% over the period 1995–2020 (UNWTO, 2004). The tourism sector contributed about US $622 billion and 210 million jobs to the global economy in 2004. These numbers are estimated to reach US $2 trillion and 305 million jobs in 2020 (Reid & Schwab, 2006). ∗Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] # 2014 Taylor & Francis Journal of Heritage Tourism 149 Cultural heritage is a topic that has recently attracted the attention of economists (Laplante, Meisner, & Wang, 2005). Cultural heritage tourism has become a major source of income, strengthening and diversifying a community’s economic base of several developing countries due to the strong linkage with several industries (Brink, 1998; Lee & Han, 2002; Mazimhaka, 2007). The demand for cultural heritage sites (CHS) by tourists is influenced by the availability of services provided by the government, as well as the willingness and viability of the local community to cooperate to stimulate tourism of historical sites (Lazrak, Nijkamp, & Rietveld, 2009; Maskey, Brown, Collins, & Nassar, 2007). The purpose of this study was to develop a model that identifies factors affecting the will- ingness of tourists to visit the CHS in Jordan’s Northern Badia, and the marginal impact of each of those factors. This study is designed to assess non-Arab tourists, because Arab culture shares significant commonalities among international lines and differences are not clearly demarcated by borders. Consequently, the CHS will likely not attract them, as the goal of these sites is to appeal to people looking for new attractions. This study will try to answer the following questions: what is the percentage of tourists arriving in Jordan who are willing to visit CHS, and what will be the anticipated economic return on local commu- nities in the targeted region? The results of the study are expected to assist decision-makers in Jordan before implementing tourism projects in the Northern Badia. Willingness to travel (WTT) measures the values of what individuals report and is an attitudinal approach. It measures what they say, not what they do (Hanemann, 1991;Ng & Mendlesohn, 2006). This method helps economists and decision-makers estimate the impact of economic decisions and activities, as well as estimate the monetary value of all economic benefits that a society derives from public goods like cultural heritage resources (Poor & Smith, 2004; Nuva, Shamsudin, Radam, & Shuib, 2009). This technique helps to estimate the number of potential visitors to the region before any action is taken with respect to investment at the sites. WTT is also called the contingent activity method. It is a travel forecasting model and is a key component of estimating the volume of tourists who will travel to a certain site/sites (Heyes & Heyes, 1999). WTT assumes that the value of the site or its recreational services is reflected in how much people are willing to travel to visit the site (Navrud & Ready, 2002). The WTT models allow researchers to estimate the costs and benefits of adding or removing recreational activities to an existing or new site, because it helps determine whether people are willing to travel to the site before the public bears additional costs to implement a project (Samdin, 2008). On the other hand, this method assumes that respondents understand that what they Downloaded by [Jordan Univ. of Science & Tech] at 01:55 05 April 2016 receive will reflect their preferences exactly. Also, respondents may answer the questions based on their feeling (positive or negative) at the time of the interview which might not always be right, or might be based on their understanding of the question (Holvad, 1999). Nevertheless, contingent methods are still one of the most useful and successful methods used to provide decision-makers the best picture about the importance of recrea- tion on a site, especially with public goods which are not traded on the market (Alberini & Cooper, 2000). Tourism indicators in Jordan The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is located in the Middle East, northeast of Saudi Arabia, south of Syria, west of Iraq, and east of Israel and the West Bank (Figure 1). The total area of Jordan is approximately 89,000 km2, including 540 km2 of surface water (Department of 150 I.N. Abuamoud et al. Downloaded by [Jordan Univ. of Science & Tech] at 01:55 05 April 2016 Figure 1. Location of Jordan. Source: http://travel-image.org/tag/jordan-map. Land and Survey, 2009). In 1946, Jordan became an independent country and was ruled from 1953 to 1999 by King Hussein. It is now ruled by his son, King Abdullah II. In the early 1970s, the outward migration of young, highly qualified Jordanians, as well as the need for talented people in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, created an econ- omic boom in Jordan that lasted until the early1980s (Piro, 1998). With the economic downturn in the Gulf countries in the mid-1980s, however, demand for Jordanian workers declined and remittances dropped. These factors, in addition to the first and second Gulf wars and the number of refugees associated with the wars, lowered GDP Journal of Heritage Tourism 151 growth rates from an annual average of 10% over the period 1973–1980 to 3.2% for 2010 (CBJ, 2010a, 2010b; Knowles, 2005). During the 1990s, these events led the Jordanian government to implement liberalization policies, including privatization of public sector areas, such as the elimination of subsidies for animal feed. This policy had a negative impact on the income of herders and has led to an increase in poverty around the Badia. These policies also had a negative impact on poor communities, especially the Bedouin people, who have been the first to be hurt by financial crises and the last to benefit from economic prosperity. The economic and political events that swept the globe beginning in 2008 led to a decline in global tourism by approximately 7% (UNWTO, 2009). According to the UNWTO, in the first four months of 2011, international tourist arrivals grew by 4.5%, with the exception of the Middle East. Due to recent political developments, the Middle East has not seen the same growth. However, according to the Jordan Tourism Board (JTB), Jordan has witnessed a 23.4% increase in tourist arrivals between January and Sep- tember 2010, compared to the same period in 2009 (JTB, 2011). Tourism can be a critical component of the economy for a country with limited natural resources like Jordan (Table 1). According to the Central Bank of Jordan, tourist activity accounts for 13% of GDP and is one of the most important foreign exchange sources for the Jordanian economy with a figure at $1.3 billion in 2007 (UNWTO, 2005, 2006, 2008).
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