5.5.1 Profiles of Respondents for Payar, Tioman and Redang
How representative the data are of the population is unknown since the tourists’
population characteristics to these marine parks are unknown. However, there are
several characteristics that match the characteristics of nature tourists in the literatures.
For instance, the distribution of foreign and local respondents to Payar in this study
(60.5% of foreign respondents) match with the statistics from the Fisheries Department
where 65 percent of visitors to Payar are foreigners (refer to Table 1.3). Most foreign
tourists visit Payar because of the mass promotions done by the tour operators in
Langkawi Island as part of a tour package. The opposite is found for Redang where
78.3% of the respondents are local visitors because Redang is a favourite place to visit
by the locals and the promotion abroad or on the net on Redang are much less rigorous.
This study found almost an equal distribution of male and female respondents (50.3%
males and 49.7% females). However, some literature shows that the distribution among
genders are equal, some shows majority of male, and some shows majority of female
nature tourists. For example, some studies, as quoted in Wight (1996) have reported a
Research Group, 1998; Nababan and Aliadi, 1993; Tourism Canada, 1995); a majority
of females (Cook, Stewart and Repass, 1992; Reingold, 1993); and an even split of
males and females (Boo, 1990; Ingram and Durst, 1987).
The modal class of respondents in this study are in the 20 – 29 years age group (50.3%),
signifying that eco-tourism is a “youthful” activity (Ayob et al., 2002). This is
supported by a study by Ayob et al. (2000), who also found the same pattern of visitors
to Payar with 43% of the visitors are in the age group of 20 – 29 years. Only 4.8 % are
below 20 years old and 5.8% are over 50 years old. This figure is also the same as
findings in Ayob et al. (2002) with 8.7% of respondents over 50 years old and 6.7%
below 20 years old. However, the literatures provide mix evidence on the age of nature
tourists. For example, as quoted in Wight (1996), there are some studies which stated
that nature tourists to be older than the average tourists (Boo, 1990; Backman and Potts,
1993; Eagles and Cascagnette, 1995). On the other hand, studies by Yuan and Moisey
(1992), and Chudintra (1993) finds that nature tourists are younger than the average
tourists.
Consistent with previous literature, this study also found that more than half of
respondents (75.5%) are highly educated, with at least a post-secondary education. Only
1.1% has a minimum of primary education, all of them are foreign visitors. Previous
literature also suggests that nature tourists tend to be more highly educated than general
tourists (Wilson, 1987; Tourism Research Group, 1988; Butler and Hvenegaard, 1988;
Fennell and Smale, 1992; Cook, Stewart and Repass, 1992; Backman and Potts, 1993),
“the majority of UK ecotourists are also educated but tend to be a
younger group as most of them are 17 – 35 years old”.
Obua and Harding (1996) found that their study support the findings by Ryel and
Grasse (1991) who view ecotourism travellers to be educated and work as professionals.
Their findings also show that students are the second most frequent visitors to nature
tourism places.
5.5.2 Activity of Interest
This study finds that the most popular activity in all three parks is snorkeling (Payar -
68.8%; Redang - 81.1% and Tioman - 69.5%). This is also the finding of research by
Ayob et al. (2002) in Payar stating that 69% of visitors engaged in this activity. Other
popular activities include relaxing and swimming in all three parks. In Payar swimming
becomes the fourth ranked because the visitors are more interested in fish feeding
activity. This is also due to the fact that Payar has a very limited space to swim.
Trekking became one of the activities of interest chosen by respondents in Tioman
(24.9%) because Tioman is rich in forest areas with part of the forests are under
protection.
There are two activities that show some significant differences between foreign and the
local respondents. The first activity is diving. More than 33% of the foreign respondents
choose this activity compared to 14.6% of the local visitors. This shows that diving as a
sport is still unpopular among the locals. The most probable reason is because
type of sports that Malaysians feel like trying on. The second activity where the local
respondents choose compared to the foreign respondents is fish feeding. This activity is
readily provided by the tour operators in all three parks. From our interview with some
foreign respondents, they are even against the fish feeding activity because for them this
is not a ‘healthy’ activity as they fear one day the fish would not know how to hunt their
own food and if there are no more visitors to the park, the fish will die of hunger.
5.5.3 Perception on Attributes
Overall, the four attributes that this study focus on is still in a good condition according
to the perception of the respondents. Water visibility is still rated “clear” by more than
50% of the respondents. More than 60% of the respondents rated “many” for fish
species variety, nearly half of the respondents rated “many” for corals variety and “not
too much” for development for all three parks.
The scenario is a little bit different for individual parks. Corals variety in Payar is
perceived to be in a bad shape where 63.4% of the respondents rated it negatively (“not
too many” and “very few”).
Foreign respondents seem to have a different perception on attributes compared to the
local respondents of the marine parks they have visited. This can be seen in water
visibility where about 23 % of foreign respondents rated it as “cloudy” but only 13.6%
of locals rated it as “cloudy”. This might be because foreign visitors have visited other
50% of the foreign visitors stated that they had visited other parks compared to only
about 30% of the local visitors had the opportunity. It is the opposite case for fish
species and corals variety. More of local respondents rated it “not too many” compared
to foreign respondents (26.9% compared to 15.8%). Similarly, more of the local
respondents rated corals variety as “not too many” compared to the foreign respondents
(43.5% compared to 34.2% respectively). The most probable reasons might be because
the locals compare the current situation with previous conditions or their expectations
are higher than the foreign visitors. There are no significant difference in the
development attribute between the foreign and local respondents where both perceived
the park they visited as “not too much” development. Taken together, this variability
suggests separate models for locals and foreigners in calculating the WTPs which are
done in the next chapter.
Payar had the highest rate of respondents saying “yes” to the perception on crowds of
all three parks. This is because Payar is a very small island with a beach of about half a
kilometre long where almost all the visitors congregate. For Tioman, it can be
concluded that there is no issue of too many tourists since only about 30% of
respondents agree that it is crowded. This might be due to the fact that there are about 5
different places which can be visited by the visitors and that makes it seem not very