Economic Valuation of Environmental Resources at Selected Hot Springs in Perak

This article aims to examine individual travel cost at selected hot springs as part of the efforts to develop health, wellness and recreational-based tourism in Perak. It first argues that the individual's place of origins determines their accessibility to the study sites. This paper then identifies and analyses the visitors' travel expenditure during their visit to each hot spring. The last section will discuss the effects of using hot springs for future health, wellness and recreational-based tourism in Perak. Using a Travel Cost Method, a Willingness–to-Pay of visitors was calculated as function of travel cost that incurred to reach a location. The paper utilizes a primary data which were collected during peak season from November to December in 2017 involving 241 visitors. The findings show that majority of the visitors are those who lived more than 50 km from the hot spring and spent more than one hour for each visit. In addition, each individual visitor to the hot spring generally spent by about RM 58.98 for their visit. This indicates that the hot spring potentially has the economic value in promoting health, wellness and recreational-based tourism.