Why Do They Do That? Understanding Factors Influencing Visitor Spatial Behavior in Parks and Protected Areas

Visitors to parks and protected areas within the United States and worldwide often visit these areas with a particular destination in mind, such as seeing Old Faithful erupt in Yellowstone National Park or standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon in Grand Canyon National Park. These visitor use destinations, and the pathways leading to them, such as trails and roadways, see high levels of use, and as a result, impacts to soil, vegetation, air, water, soundscapes, and night skies that result from this use. The field of recreation ecology studies these impacts to park and protected area resources resulting from recreation use. Research conducted by recreation ecologists helps park and protected area managers prevent and minimize these impacts and preserve park resources for future generations. However, not all recreation use and impacts occur along designated pathways and at visitor destinations. The impacts that result outside of these designated areas often cause more damage to park resources such as vegetation and soil. The studies presented in this dissertation examine what factors are influencing visitor behavior outside of these destinations and pathways, such as when visitors travel off of designated trails. The results provide managers with a set of factors that may influence visitor behavior outside of visitors’ intended destinations. These factors will enable managers to better understand existing visitor spatial behavior patterns and associated resource impacts, and also predict where resource impacts may be likely to occur due to visitor recreation use, enabling prevention of future impacts from occurring

Nature-based tourism, resource dependence, and resilience of Arctic communities: framing complex issues in a changing environment

This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Sustainable Tourism on 16 May 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/ https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2019.1612905.Current research on tourism in the Arctic has focused largely on the extent, location, and type of tourism activities that occur in the region. Recently, challenges have been identified that the tourism industry is likely to face in the wake of global changes, including climate change. Related research, conducted within and outside of the Arctic, suggests that rural communities can become economically dependent on natural resource extraction (e.g. oil, gas, timber harvesting, and mining of minerals) and non-extractive resources (e.g. nature-based recreation and tourism), limiting diversification and potentially threatening resilience of rural communities. In the western USA, communities have become dependent on both extractive and non-extractive natural resource activities including nature-based tourism; however, it is less clear whether a similar situation is occurring in Arctic communities. In this article, we propose a framework and indicators to analyze the potential dependence of Arctic communities on nature-based tourism and the resilience of Arctic communities to potential boom–bust cycles of nature-based tourism. To do so, we examine the current state-of-knowledge about tourism and nature-based tourism in the Arctic through the lens of boom–bust dynamics and social-ecological systems

Nature-based tourism, resource dependence, and resilience of Arctic communities: framing complex issues in a changing environment

This is an original manuscript / preprint of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Sustainable Tourism on 16 May 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/ https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2019.1612905.Current research on tourism in the Arctic has focused largely on the extent, location, and type of tourism activities that occur in the region. Recently, challenges have been identified that the tourism industry is likely to face in the wake of global changes, including climate change. Related research, conducted within and outside of the Arctic, suggests that rural communities can become economically dependent on natural resource extraction (e.g. oil, gas, timber harvesting, and mining of minerals) and non-extractive resources (e.g. nature-based recreation and tourism), limiting diversification and potentially threatening resilience of rural communities. In the western USA, communities have become dependent on both extractive and non-extractive natural resource activities including nature-based tourism; however, it is less clear whether a similar situation is occurring in Arctic communities. In this article, we propose a framework and indicators to analyze the potential dependence of Arctic communities on nature-based tourism and the resilience of Arctic communities to potential boom–bust cycles of nature-based tourism. To do so, we examine the current state-of-knowledge about tourism and nature-based tourism in the Arctic through the lens of boom–bust dynamics and social-ecological systems