The Preference and Participation of Whale Resources and Whale Watching

The purpose of this study is to understand general perception of utilizing whale resources and preference for implementing whale watching tourism. This article examines perception of whale resources and identifies preferred types of the whale watching program in the feasibility of a whale watching tourism. And also analyzing the causal effect between perception of the whale resources and intention for participating in regarding the types of whale watching tourism. The results of this study showed that there are high interest in protecting and preserving of whale resources and low intention to resume the operation of commercial whale hunting. For utilizing of whale resources, we need to consider developing whale watching tour as ecotourism. The interest and watching for whale resources have a high level of relation with participating intention in whale tourism. Participation of whale tourism will be induced by developing new types of whale tourism to meet the interests for whale resources, This approach is hoped by authors to provide useful data for implementation of whale tour program and establishing improvement plan of whale tourism.