ABSTRACT Despite its positive image boat-based marine wildlife tourism, including whale-watching, endangers animals’ habitats and populations. This highlights the importance of transitioning towards more sustainable forms of boating. This could be achieved through certification with ecolabels that establish clear guidelines for operators, and ensure compliance, while informing tourists of these higher standards. Ecolabelled operators should be able to gain a competitive edge by offering a more sustainable product. The aim of this paper is to analyse tourists’ willingness to pay for a new ecolabel for sustainable boating in the case of whale-watching in Iceland using the Contingent Valuation Method. Results of a survey of 337 whale-watchers show that 60% were very likely to choose an ecolabelled tour, and that 65.9% were likely or very likely to be willing to pay ∼20% more for an ecolabelled tour. Considering the intention-behaviour gap, the low importance of environmental issues for choosing the operator, and other biases, it is probable that the ecolabel would only influence preferences in a limited market niche. We suggest that the new ecolabel has a high potential for promoting sustainability in boating tourism if it develops into a full-blown CSR approach that covers a content broader than just environmental issues.

中文翻译：

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游客愿意为可持续发展的划船而使用蓝旗的新生态标签：冰岛的赏鲸案例

摘要尽管其形象令人印象深刻，但包括赏鲸在内的船用海洋野生生物旅游业却威胁着动物的栖息地和种群。这凸显了向更可持续的划船形式过渡的重要性。这可以通过使用生态标签进行认证来实现，这些标签可以为运营商建立明确的准则，并确保合规性，同时将这些更高的标准告知游客。具有生态标签的运营商应能够通过提供更具可持续性的产品来获得竞争优势。本文的目的是使用条件估值法分析游客在冰岛赏鲸的情况下为可持续划船支付新的生态标签的意愿。一项对337名观鲸者的调查结果表明，有60％的人非常有可能选择带有生态标签的旅行，而有65人则非常有选择。9％的人可能或非常愿意为生态标签的旅行支付约20％的费用。考虑到意向行为差距，环境问题对运营商选择的重要性低以及其他偏见，生态标签很可能只会在有限的市场环境中影响偏好。我们建议，如果新的生态标签发展为全面的企业社会责任方法，其涵盖的内容不仅限于环境问题，那么在促进划船旅游业的可持续性方面具有很高的潜力。