A QUANTITATIVE PERSPECTIVE OF DIVERS PERCEPTION OF TULAMBEN UNDERWATER AS THE DIVING SITE IN BALI, INDONESIA

Bali marine tourism development increased significantly since 2009 after the second Bali bombing incident. However, the total numbers of the diving site destination in Bali are not comparable with number of divers, both of domestic and non-domestic. Recently, the total number of diving site in Bali are 16 sites whereas the numbers of dive operator are 330 companies. These phenomena cause heavy competition amongst businesses to survive as well as the careless attention of marine environment and the degrade of satisfaction in diving experiences. This paper aims to study the effects of site access, sea water condition, the marine beauty and the underwater diversity of Tulamben, the most famous dive site in Bali, toward divers’ satisfaction as well their willingness to pay (WTP) for the entrance and dive fee. Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) was applied to analyse the causal relationship among variables with data were collected from 200 divers in the period January to March 2018. The CB-SEM showed, positioned as the exogenous variables, the sea water condition is the only factor that affects divers’ satisfaction while the others demonstrated insignificant influences. In addition, divers’ satisfaction, in turn, showed significantly effect to their WTP in paying the fees. Keywords: Tourism management, Bali, Diving site, SEM, WTP