Perceived crowding and encounter norms of KayaKers in Pacific rim national ParK reserve, canada

Abstract

This article investigates crowding and encounter norms of 375 kayakers visiting the Broken group Islands in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, Canada. To measure encounter norms, kayakers evaluated photographs showing increasing densities of (a) kayaks on the water, (b) motorboats on the water, and (c) tents at a campsite. Norm curve characteristics helped to define kayaker standards for quality marine tourism and recreation experiences, including minimum acceptable conditions at one time (4.8 kayaks, 2.2 motorboats, 4.7 tents). In addition, significant differences existed between marine (39% felt crowded while on the water) and terrestrial (80% felt crowded while at campsites) perceptions of crowding. Implications for park management include a need to assess the appropriateness of both terrestrial and marine conditions when managing for kayak activity. This may include a consideration of user quotas in marine and terrestrial settings, as well as expanding the number of available campsites.

Assessing perceived crowding of diving sites in Hong Kong

“…Heberlein and Vaske (1977) developed a single-item measure of perceived crowding on a 9-point Likert scale where 1 or 2 indicate "not at all crowded", 3 to 4 "slightly crowded", 5 to 7 "moderately crowded" and 8 to 9 "extremely crowded". This measure has been used in a number of recreation and tourism studies (Shelby et al, 1989;Shelby and Vaske, 2007;Vaske and Shelby, 2008;Randall et al, 2013).…”

Predicting perceived level of disturbance of visitors due to crowding in protected areas

“…From the individual levels, norm curves that can be used to determine overall acceptable use levels are constructed. The method is widely accepted and often used for general visitor management [ 14 – 17 ], as well as specific activities such as diving [ 18 – 20 ], kayaking [ 21 ], and nautical tourism [ 11 ].…”

Encounter norms among visitors at a national park in Turkey

“…Encounter norms refer to standards that individuals use for evaluating their acceptance or tolerance of increasing numbers of encounters with other people (Shelby et al, 1996;Manning, 2007). Research has examined encounter norms or the maximum number of people that users will accept in a given setting (see Vaske, Donnelly and Shelby, 1992;Shelby et al, 1996;Donnelly, Vaske, Whittaker and Shelby, 2000;Manning, 2007Manning, , 2011Needham et al, 2011;Vaske et al, 2013;Anderson and Manning, 2013;Randall and Rollins, 2013;for reviews). Other applications have extended this approach to different indicators and impacts, such as campsite or site sharing (Heberlein and Dunwiddie, 1979;Shelby, 1981), fishing site competition (Martinson and Shelby, 1992;Whittaker and Shelby, 1993), instream flows for recreation (Whittaker and Shelby, 2002), discourteous behavior (Whittaker andShelby, 1988, 1993;Whittaker, Vaske and Williams, 2000), resource indicators such as litter and campsite impacts (Shelby, Vaske and Harris, 1988;Vaske, Whittaker, Shelby and Manfredo, 2002) and facility indicators (e.g., tramway, trail road) (Kim, Shelby and Needham, 2014).…”