1. Introduction
An island is a naturally formed land mass surrounded by water that exists above water at high tide [
1]. Islands play an important strategic role in safeguarding national rights and interests, defense and ecological security, and economic and social development [
2]. As an important part of the marine ecosystem, islands are rich in tourism resources and have become attractive tourist destinations with their unique charm [
3]; this island tourism has attracted the attention of scholars [
4,
5,
6,
7]. However, tourism also has a negative impact on the island ecosystem service function [
8]. With the arrival of many tourists, the provisioning, regulating, and supporting functions of island ecosystem services have increasingly degraded, resulting in a lack of freshwater resources, and increased resource consumption, pollutant discharge, severe flooding, soil erosion, and bare rock area [
9,
10,
11]. Simultaneously, the ecological environment has suffered severe damage, and the human–island relationship has been adversely affected. Despite this, island culture remains a major tourist attraction and a unique selling point.
Previous studies have focused on the tourism industry, society, environment, and sustainable aspects of island tourism research. Bater (1997) regarded the sustainable development of the island economy as a starting point and proposed that the balanced development of the economy should be paid attention to under the premise of limited re-sources and population increase [
12]. Abeyratne (1999) believed that the region must fully consider the impact of tourism development on the economy, social culture, environment, and ecology, as well as regional cooperation, marine science, and technological application, in addition to several other issues to ensure the moderate and sustainable development of tourism [
13]. Kokkranikal et al. (2003) studied the sustainable development of tourism in Loksawai Islands, India. They pointed out that under the influence of geographical location and environmental constraints, the premise of sustainable development is to turn disadvantages into advantages and promote sustainable development of tourism by restricting people’s behaviors [
14]. Kerr (2005) explored the development and characteristics of small islands, compared different sustainable development models, and discussed the sustainable development of small islands with empirical research [
15]. A study conducted by Méheux et al. (2006) on Vanuatu Island in the western Pacific showed that whether tourism managers are aware of natural hazards is of decisive significance in the business process, and their psychological preparation for this can better safeguard the sustainable development of the island [
16]. The above studies have qualitatively analyzed the relationship between island tourism and the ecological environment. Compared to the mainland, islands have more fragile ecological environments and less resilience. In order to better balance the relationship between island environmental protection and tourism development, it is essential to evaluate the value of island recreation from a quantitative perspective. Scientific assessment of recreational and cultural ecosystem services values of islands can provide data to support the optimization of resource allocation and development and utilization efficiency. This study aims to improve the government’s understanding of island ecological environments in a more comprehensive manner. Decision-makers and planners should consider the ecological value of the natural environment and be aware of the environment’s recreational and cultural values. Our findings suggest that the recreational and cultural ecosystem services value of islands can be significantly enhanced by improving island facilities, deepening the cultural value of recreational activities, and reflecting the practical significance of this research.
Ecosystem services are important links and bridges connecting the natural environment and human wellbeing [
17]. Therefore, effective measurement and monitoring ecosystem services are critical for promoting harmony between humans and nature, as well as practicing the concept of ecological civilization construction [
18]. Ecosystem services refer to the various benefits of tangible materials and intangible services directly or indirectly obtained from the ecosystem [
19]. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (in 2005) divided ecosystem services into four categories: supporting, regulating, provisioning, and cultural services. Among these, cultural services are defined as those non-material benefits humans obtain from the ecosystem through spiritual satisfaction, cognitive development, thought, amusement, and aesthetic experience [
20]. The concept of cultural services can be further expanded to include tourism recreation, aesthetic experience, spiritual satisfaction, social relations, and educational knowledge [
21]. Tourism recreation refers to the leisure, entertainment, and cultural services provided by the ecosystem based on natural landscapes, which have economic, social, and ecological benefits [
22,
23]. Recreation is characterized by non-exclusive and non-competitive quasi-public goods [
24], and its value is essentially a manifestation of the economization of tourism resources [
25]. The assessment of the recreation economic value proposed by Costanza is an important accounting element in ecosystem services [
26], and serves as the theoretical basis for fixing the reasonable consumption price in tourist attractions, along with the effective development and protection of tourism resources [
27]. Since the 1950s, the evaluation of recreational value has been an important research direction in economics, geography, and environmental science [
28,
29]. In the 1960s and 1970s, with the rapid development of the global tourism industry and increasing awareness of environmental conflict, environmental economists began to notice that natural resources and the environment were not limitless, and, realizing the scarcity of resources, to consider the economic value of non-market goods or services; consequently, research turned to the evaluation of monetary value [
30]. Since the 1980s and 1990s, the field has witnessed the formation of various methods of determining value: the public goods theory; the theory of western and welfare economics; consumer surplus, opportunity cost, willingness to pay, resources and environment value theory; the continuous improvement of the public goods theory; and the recreation economic value evaluation theoretical system [
31]. Therefore, the research methods of determining recreational value are becoming increasingly diversified.
As a non-market item, recreational value cannot be directly assessed for its economic value; its market value can only be estimated by substituting other valuable items or assessing the behavior of consuming related commodities [
32]. The travel cost method (TCM) and contingent valuation method (CVM) are the main research methods used for recreational value assessment. Both models are based on the utility value and consumer surplus value theories. The main difference between them is that the TCM uses the actual consumption of tourists to calculate consumer surplus, whereas the CVM is a stated preference method that calculates consumer surplus according to the consumption willingness of tourists [
33,
34,
35,
36]. CVM is greatly disturbed by tourists’ subjective factors [
37]. Based on the research objects and contents, TCM has been more widely used and improved by domestic and foreign research scholars [
38,
39]. In this study, TCM is used to analyze the recreational and cultural ecosystem services value of islands. In 1947, Hotelling [
40] first proposed the TCM, and then Clawson [
41] conducted more in-depth research on the travel cost model. Mendelsohn et al. studied the steps and methods of TCM [
42]. Finally, in the 1980s, TCM was introduced to the domestic research field [
43]. The method is mainly used in national parks, forests, wetlands, and lakes containing recreational functions that feature scenic spots, nature reserves, and cultural tourism attractions [
44]. There are few studies on island recreation value using TCM. China is one of the countries with the largest number of islands. The island distribution is wide, and the island types are diverse. This study uses TCM to evaluate the recreational value of islands in China, which is one of the innovations.
There are two common types of TCM models: zone TCM (ZTCM) and individual TCM (ITCM). The former assumes that the consumption behaviors of all people in a tourist source area are the same, whereas the latter assigns more weightage to individual consumption behavior [
45,
46,
47]. Clawson and Knetsch proposed the ZTCM [
48], wherein tourists in the recreational area are divided into different tourist source areas, and their travel rate and total travel cost for each tourist source area are calculated. Subsequently, once the consumption demand function of each tourist source area is obtained, the consumer surplus of each tourist source area is calculated and summed, and the total value of consumer surplus of the recreation area is obtained [
49]. ITCM was proposed by Brown and Nawas [
50] and does not need to divide travel communities. Rather, it considers the number of visits of each tourist as a function of travel time and other explanatory variables [
51]. Due to the different research emphases of ZTCM and ITCM, this study used ZTCM to analyze the overall recreational and cultural ecosystem services value of Changhai County, and ITCM to compare and analyze the recreational and cultural ecosystem services value of Xiaochangshan, Dachangshan, and Guanglu Islands. Another innovation of this study is to analyze the recreational and cultural ecosystem services value of islands from different perspectives using two methods.
The theoretical significance of this study lies in that Changhai County is considered as the starting point to study the evaluation method of island ecosystem recreation value, which enriches theoretical research in this field. Additionally, it allows the ecosystem’s recreational value to be determined more accurately and provides a scientific basis for island tourism ecological compensation.
This study expands the scopes of ZTCM and ITCM and applies them to islands. The remainder of the study is divided into three parts;
Section 2 describes the island county study region and three main islands of focus and outlines the TCM theories applied in the present study.
Section 3 presents the results.
Section 4 details policy recommendations based on the results of the study and lists the research limitations and prospects.
5. Conclusions
This study innovatively applied both ZTCM and ITCM methods to estimate the value of island ecosystem recreation cultural services in Changhai County, China. First, it estimated the total value and various values of the recreation cultural services in Changhai County from an overall perspective and obtained an overall understanding of the recreation cultural services in Changhai County. Subsequently, three main islands of Changhai County (Dachangshan, Xiaochangshan, and Guanglu Islands) were selected as the study areas, and the recreational and component values of the three islands were compared and analyzed to enable clearer identification of the development status and future development direction of the recreational services of the three islands.
ZTCM was used to analyze the overall recreational and cultural ecosystem services value of Changhai County. The total recreational and cultural ecosystem services value of Changhai County in 2019 (TV) was 533.14 million USD. Among the different services, traveling cost was 395.71 million USD and the consumer surplus was 137.43 million USD. The results show that the values of various recreational and cultural ecosystem service types in Changhai County are ranked according to tourist choice behavior and consumption behavior as follows: aesthetic experience > leisure and entertainment > spiritual satisfaction > social relationships > educational knowledge. These assessment results can provide a scientific basis for elucidating the relationship between cultural development and environmental protection of islands based on a new perspective and promote the coordinated and sustainable development of the economic, social, and ecological benefits of all islands in Changhai County.
ITCM was used to compare and analyze the recreational and cultural ecosystem services values of Dachangshan, Xiaochangshan, and Guanglu Islands. The highest per capita travel cost on Xiaochangshan Island was 358.73 USD. The consumer surplus on Dachangshan, Xiaochangshan, and Guanglu Islands were 104.69, 242.23, and 98.23 USD, respectively. Although Xiaochangshan Island had the highest per capita traveling cost and consumer surplus, its recreational and cultural ecosystem services value was the lowest, with only 60.03 million USD, which was far lower than that of Dachangshan Island (394.16 million USD). Based on the findings of this study, future research should focus on the planning and development of Xiaochangshan Island tourism to maximize consumer surplus.
The multiple values of recreational and cultural services on Dachangshan, Xiaochangshan, and Guanglu Islands should be calculated with reference to tourist preferences. The contribution value of the aesthetic experience from each island had the largest proportion. The aesthetic experience value of Xiaochangshan and Guanglu Islands was as high as 39%. Compared with other islands, Dachangshan Island has the largest proportion of spiritual satisfaction value (26.98%). The leisure and entertainment value of Dachangshan, Xiaochangshan, and Guanglu Islands account for 22.75%, 24.60%, and 22.44%, respectively. Overall, the social relations and educational knowledge cultural services of the three islands had few differences, and these factors occupied only a small proportion of the total value. Thus, based on their own resource characteristics and cultural service advantages, each island could increase the non-material benefits of its ecosystem and develop in harmony with provision, support, and regulation services in their ecosystem.