Understanding participants’ motivation and willingness to pay for joining ecotourism training courses in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT Ecotourism has developed rapidly in recent decades. Many ecotourism-related vocational training has been organized to train and prepare qualified personnel for this special tourism industry niche. This paper investigates participants’ motivations to enroll in ecotourism vocational training courses in Hong Kong. The results of the study indicated that three motivational factors, namely, career facilitation, knowledge enhancement and social interaction, motivated participants to enroll in ecotourism vocational training courses. The training participants indicated that knowledge enhancement and career facilitation were the most and the least important motives, respectively. This result indicated a significant difference from the motivations of other vocational training participants. In addition, the findings revealed that social interaction was also a vital motive for the participants and has been seldom identified in previous studies. This study's findings offer important information for ecotourism vocational training organizers as they re-design training course content and fine tune their marketing strategies to attract potential participants.