Day hiker preparedness: assessing the roles of past experience, safety messages & knowledge of safety practices

The purpose of this thesis is to take into consideration the factors that lead to safety preparedness behaviors of day hikers in the Grand Canyon National Park. In addition to that purpose, this study sought to integrate the theory of planned behavior and self-perception theory in order to better understand day hiker safety preparedness behaviors. Secondary data from a study on day hikers in the Grand Canyon National Park was used for this investigation. An interview process was employed as the method of data collection. The interview responses were analyzed and the results suggested that past experience, safety messages and knowledge about safety practices influenced safety preparedness behaviors. This study also found that safety preparedness behavior influenced day hiker posterior attitudes about safety preparedness. The resulting attitudes will help to influence future safety preparedness behaviors in a cyclical manner through the conceptual framework. Search and rescue situations might be avoided in the future by debriefing day hikers after they have completed their hike. These debriefing sessions would serve as safety messages that may help hikers identify their attitudes. In doing so, the safety message would reaffirm their positive attitudes about how they behaved correctly to face the hike???s physical challenges or the safety messages can explain what steps the day hiker may need to take if they have negative attitudes about their safety preparedness behaviors