Abstract This research aimed to apply the theory of environmental benefits valuation to assess the plan of reformation in Tanbian village¡¦s wetland. Environmental change affects economy. Therefore, through people¡¦s feedback and tourists¡¦ participation of ecotourism, this paper discussed the economic benefits in transforming Tanbian village¡¦s wetland into an eco-garden. Thus, the research adopted the Payment-card method of the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), categorized under the Non-market Valuation Techniques (NVT), analyzing the economic benefits of eco-tourism¡¦s virtual market at Tanbian village. That is, the amount of people¡¦s Willingness to Pay (WTP) was analyzed to discover the project¡¦s multiple values. Further more, by comparing and contrasting people¡¦s background information, people¡¦s data and differences among other facets were discovered. Finally, in responding to the urgent need in tourism development, this paper integrated tourists and residents¡¦ data to discover the amount of WTP. Such research mode provided a tourism benefits assessment of Tanbian village¡¦s eco-garden project, and its conclusion supplied some suggestions to government control and also future plans of the eco-garden. There are 239 respondents (including 122 residents and 117 tourists) willing to take the questionnaire survey assuming the correspondence among people¡¦s background information (resident or tourist), attitude and other variables and WTP. After analysis, the result demonstrates that sex and age have little effect on many variables. On the other hand, people¡¦s background (resident or tourist), education level, average income do have obvious influence. However, the both results are valid, showing the principle this research applied is reliable. The CVM results included: 1. Up to 91.4% People shows positive attitude toward the ten facets of Tanbian eco-garden tour. 2. The average accommodation rates for visitors willing to pay for Tanbian eco-tour is 1,100 NT dollars. And each year, 250NT dollars donation per person can be expected. 3. The average amount of willingness to pay for people to join in an eco-tour is: 118.2NT dollars for eco-tour; 105.5NT dollars for fishing village experience; 60.8NT dollars for farm life experience, 284NT dollars in total. 4. The potential tourism benefits of Tanbian eco-garden are about: 22,098,000NT/year for tourists and 4,236,000NT/year for residents, that is, 26,334,000NT dollars in sum. 5. The eco-garden is around 20 hectares. And the average annual economic benefits per hectare of the wetland were 1,316,000 NT dollars. The estimated benefits were more than the expected value of 250,000NT dollars that the landowners can gain from the wetland today. Therefore, it is feasible to develop ecotourism at this area. In the end, this research hoped to tribute some advices to Tanbian eco-garden¡¦s management, turning ecological resources into financial sources, for Penghu County to be an ecotourism paradise. Keywords: wetland, eco-garden, ecotourism, benefits assessment, Contingent Valuation Method

This research is concerned with the pre-implementation evaluation of investments in Information Systems (IS). IS evaluation is important as organisations need to assess the financial justifiability of business change proposals that include (but usually are not limited to) the introduction of IS applications. More specifically, this research addresses the problem of benefits assessment within IS evaluation. We contend that benefits assessment should not be performed at the level of the IS application, as most extant evaluation methods advocate. Instead, to study the dynamics and the interactions of the IS applications with their surrounding environment, we propose to adopt the business process as the analytic lens of evaluation and to assess the impacts of IS on organisational, rather than on technical, performance indicators. Drawing on these propositions, this research investigates the potential of dynamic process modelling (via discrete-event simulation) as a facilitator of IS evaluation. We argue that, in order to be effective evaluation tools, business process models should be able to explicitly incorporate the effects of IS introduction on business performance, an issue that is found to be under-researched in previous literature. The above findings serve as the central theme for the development of a design theory of IS evaluation by simulation. The theory provides prescriptive elements that refer both to the design products of the evaluation and the design process by which these products can come into reality. The theory draws on a set of kernel theories from the business engineering domain and proposes a set of meta-requirements that should be satisfied by business process models, a meta-design structure that meets these requirements, and a design method that provides guidance in applying the theoretical propositions in practice. The design theory is developed and empirically tested by means of two real-life case studies. The first study is used to complement the findings of a literature review and to drive the development of the design theory's components, while the second study is employed to validate and further enhance the theory's propositions. The research results support the arguments for simulation-assisted IS evaluation and demonstrate the contribution of the design theory to the field.