Visitors willingness to pay for conservation of Iban Longhouse Homestay

A Iban Longhouse Homestay, serving as a cultural and heritage holiday destination, was used as the study site for this research. The data was collected from five different locations of selected established Iban Longhouse Homestays in Sarawak. A total of 300 local and foreign visitors were interviewed. The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) was employed to estimate the value of conservation by eliciting visitors' willingness to pay. The result shows significant factors for Willingness to Pay (WTP) are origin, education, work, motivation, environment, and culture. The variables include socio-demographic characteristics, motivations for visiting, and Iban longhouse attributes. This study also applied the open-ended approach and estimation of mean and median Willingness to Pay (WTP) to meet the objectives. A total of 78.3% of respondents are willing to pay over RM20 for conservation to stay per night at an Iban Longhouse Homestay. The results show the mean conservation fees for local visitors and foreign visitors are RM28.59 and RM44.89, respectively. This study revealed that, based on the total number of tourists who visited the selected Iban Longhouse Homestays in 2019, the estimated total conservation value contributed by local and foreign visitors is RM136,076.59.