Assessing Tourists’ Preferences for Recreational Trips in National and Natural Parks as a Premise for Long-Term Sustainable Management Plans

Abstract

Sustainable tourism management plans rely on relevant and consistent information about factors that can influence the decision to visit a protected area. This paper uses the choice experiment method to investigate tourists' preferences with regard to recreational trip characteristics in national and natural parks in Romania. An on-site survey questionnaire was administered to visitors. The multinomial logit model was employed to investigate the preference orderings of the identified groups of recreational users. Overall, results indicate that tourists gain benefits after visiting the parks. Main preference differences were found for information sources and location of campsites. Visitors who stated that the park was the main trip destination were willing to have access to more information sources, the marks on trails being insufficient. Camping is preferred only in organized places, expressing the concern for environmental protection. The results of this study have management implications, highlighting the importance of assessing tourists' preferences as a foundation for developing sustainable tourism strategies.

Residents’ Perception of Destination Quality: Key Factors for Sustainable Rural Development

“…Even if it is above the satisfactory level, the existence and the quality of hiking trails is assessed by the local residents as one of the most critical aspects of the general tourism infrastructure (mean = 3.17 ± 1.255) ( Table 4). In the case of rural communities that are located near national and natural parks, as it is the case of many settlements in the North-West Development Region of Romania, insufficient or damaged marks on hiking trails may affect the quality of tourism [115].…”

The motric, Educational, Recreational and Satisfaction Impact of Adventure Education Activities in the Urban Tourism Environment

“…Adventure tourism is an attractive and popular form of tourism that focuses on optimizing four aspects: sustainable development, environmental protection, entrepreneurial development and improvement of the quality of life [12][13][14]. Besides general aspects of area development and sustainability, the benefits of urban adventure tourism at the individual level [15], contributes to the formation of proactive behaviors in accordance with the preferences, the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and expectations of tourists [16][17][18].…”

Adventure Tourism: Insight from Experienced Visitors of Romanian National and Natural Parks

“…Tourist can have deeper cultural experiences, such as getting to know new places and enjoying new experiences, together with their strong cultural links. Facilities and services referred to general infrastructure, accommodation, information centers, information panels, toilet facilities and cleanliness, all being selected based on previous studies [4], and were evaluated using a 5-point Likert scale where 1 meant not at all satisfied and 5 meant extremely satisfied. Descriptive statis-tics were used to summarize the data and an independent t-test was used to determine differences between groups.…”

“…Adventure tourism is observed as having a rapid growth all over the world [1][2][3], being considered as a modern form of tourism. The opportunity of practicing adventure tourism in the Romanian national and natural parks is attractive due to the unique characteristics and the relatively broad range of activities that can be experienced, the benefits tourists gain from recreational trips being highly valued [4]. The parks are known for their wide diversity of fauna and flora with unique and endangered species, multiple recreational opportunities, as well as for their commercial uses, such as ecotourism, hunting tours, camping places, berries, etc.…”