Investigating Tourists’ Willingness to Walk (WTW) to Attractions within Scenic Areas: A Case Study of Tongli Ancient Town, China

Abstract

This paper aims to quantify tourists’ willingness to walk (WTW) in the intra-destination choice in pedestrian scenic areas. The case study presented is the Tongli Ancient Town (Jiangsu Province, China), which has a significant number of heritage sites, but tourism management has been weak. The main objective was achieved by surveying sequential destination choices in the site, with a total of 272 interviewed tourists. A Multi-Stop Behavior Model (MBM) was constructed to identify the factors that influence tourists’ intra-destination choice and willingness to walk (WTW). On the whole, the evidence showed that tourists prefer core-area attractions to peripheral attractions. Walking distance is the most important variable in tourists’ attraction choice. Moreover, WTWs of tourist segments showed both similarities and disparities, inspiring more pertinent strategies in line with tourists’ preferences. Policy and management implications are drawn based on the empirical findings and their effects are predicted using Monte Carlo (MC) simulation.