Author(s): Muhammad Hassan Mahboob, Muhammad Ashfaq, Asad Afzal Humayon, Mustafa Kan
The basic purpose of this paper was to assess the tourist’s willingness to pay (WTP) for cultural heritage, their attitude toward cultural heritage, halal products (HPs), and estimate the average spending of the tourists. Moreover, the tourist's satisfaction level towards halal products. It also analyzed buying behavior, the risk associated, and preferences regarding halal food products. The data were collected in the last quarter of 2019 with the help of a well-prepared questionnaire, and respondents were selected through simple random technique. The contingent valuation method was used to estimate the mean of WTP for cultural heritage visits, and the question was in the form of dichotomous choice (yes/no). The results are drawn based on primary data using a survey of 200 tourists. Binary logistic and ordinary least square (OLS) models were applied to estimate the WTP. These statistical analyses have done with the help of MS Excel (socio-economic) and statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) WTP. The majority of the tourists were WTP and on average USD 900 and USD, 85 were the spending of the international and national tourists respectively. Tourist’s income positively, cost, and distance negatively related to his/her home to cultural heritage were the significant determinants of WTP of the tourists. Results show that tourists preferred halal products having ‘Halal tags’ (65%), environmentally friendly (10%), healthy (13.5%), and alcohol-free (15.5%). Income was the major factor having positive and significant at (1%) impact on WTP. Food authorities should make sure that all tourists get the quality products having information along with ‘halal tag’ and the service provider should have adequate education level so that they can communicate with tourists easily and can provide better services.