RESULTS
Country of Origin

From the total of 587 respondents, 173 (29.5%) are local tourists while 414 (70.5%) are foreign ones. According to Bee (1998: 38), the local visitor population for the site for the 1995-97 period was 28.5%; hence our sample is quite representative in this sense. Among the foreign tourists, Japanese (16.9%), Hong Kong (12.9%), British (9.5%) and Australian (5.6%) tourists are the leading groups to visit Pulau Payar (refer to tables 3 and 4 in Appendix). Previous studies elsewhere found that the origins of visitors are varied depending on the type of activity preferred, besides other factors such as local opportunity, intervening opportunity, distance, costs and marketing efforts. According to Wight (1996), a study done by Tourism Canada (1995) found that Canadians are the primary market to Canada (57%), followed by U.S residents (23%) and those from overseas (20%). Since Malaysia has a very small population, compared to Canada or the USA, it is not surprising that Malaysians make up only a minority proportion of visitors to Pulau Payar.

Table 1 above provides some socio-economic profile of the subjects. Out of the total of 587 respondents in the survey, 302 (51%) are male and 285 (49%) are female. The gender mix of nature tourists reported in the literature is varied. Some studies, as quoted in Wight (1996), have reported a majority of males [(Fennel and Smale (1992); Backman and Potts (1993); Tourism Research Group (1988); Nababan and Aliadi (1993); Tourism Canada (1995)]; a majority of females [(Cook, Stewart and Repass (1992); Reingold (1993)]; or an even split of males and females [(Boo (1990); Ingram and Durst (1987)]

A majority (84.6 %) of the respondents are in the 20 to 49 years age group. The modal class is the 20-29 age group (43%), signifying that eco-tourism is a "youthful" activity. Bee (1998) found the mean age for Malaysian and Japanese visitors to be 29 years and Chinese 33 years. Less than 10% (8.7 %) of the visitors to Pulau Payar are over 50 years old and 6.6 % are below 20 years old. The literature has given varying information about the age of nature tourists. For example, unlike the present finding, nature tourists have been said to be older than the average tourist [(Boo (1990); Backman and Potts (1993); Eagles and Cascagnette (1995)]; younger than average tourists [(Yuan and Moisey (1992); Chudintra (1993); 54 years on average [(Fennel and Smale (1992)]; mid-30s to mid-50s in the Yukon, but mid-20s to mid-40s in the Northwest Territories [(Tourism Research Group (1998)] as mentioned in Wight (1996). Specifically, Butler and Hvenegaard (1988) found that the average age of birders in Point Pelee was 49 years while Wilson (1987) found that the average age for visitors to the Galapagos National park was 42 years as discussed in Meric and Hunt (1998).

Most of the respondents (69%) at Pulau Payar are highly educated, with at least a tertiary education. Only a small fraction of them (2%) have a minimum of primary education, while 28% have a high school education. Previous literature consistently 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)] as quoted from different sources in Wight (1996). For example, Butler and Hvenegaard (1988) found that 62.5% of their sample had at least a bachelor's degree. Likewise, Wilson (1987) found that 10% of her sample had a doctoral degree and more than 40% had a bachelor's degree (Meric and Hunt, 1998). Bee (1998) reported that 73% of her Japanese respondents at Pulau Payar had a university education, but only a third of the Malaysians belonged to this category. As for occupation, 45% of our respondents report working with the private sector and about 36% are either in government service, or are students or self self-employed .

Previous | Next