Whitewater recreationists’ preferences for social, resource and managerial attributes in the Alpine Nature and Geopark Styrian Eisenwurzen

Abstract

The Salza River is located in the Alpine Nature and Geopark Styrian Eisenwurzen and is used heavily for whitewater recreation. One of the main goals of protected area management is to provide opportunities for outdoor recreation to maintain or enhance the quality of visitor experience. This study explored whitewater recreationists' crowding perceptions and preferences for river trip scenarios on the Salza River, Austria, using a discrete choice experiment. Six attributes described social, resource and managerial river conditions. More than 70% of the paddlers reported crowding. Results of the discrete choice experiment suggest that use levels are by far the most important attribute, followed by the river difficulty and the river access fee. Boaters preferred low numbers of people on the river, no waiting times for car parking or boat launching, moderate river difficulty, shorter trip lengths and a low river access fee. The findings could be of use to the Nature Park in helping to better understand the preferences of one of its main target groups.Research eco.mont -Volume 9, Number 2,

An Examination of Whitewater Boaters’ Place Attachment and Specialization in Four Different River Settings

“…The rivers provide different river trip experiences based on river difficulty and were located either in urban-proximate or remote areas (Kainzinger et al 2016, 2017) (Table 1). …”

“…From a management perspective, this indicates non-local whitewater boaters might have other motivations, such as challenge (Galloway 2012), rather than the whitewater location itself. Resource managers should also fully understand potential users to their rivers, which can allow whitewater boaters choose a river based on their preferences and skill levels (Kainzinger et al 2016, 2017). …”

Landscape Preferences of Visitors to the Danube Floodplains National Park, Vienna

“…Many studies have found that visitors to natural areas prefer low use levels [18][19][20][21][22]. Recreation research has often analyzed water-based river recreation use such as canoeing or kayaking [19,[22][23][24], while studies on preferences for visitor use levels of terrestrial riverscape visitors are rare. The majority of water-based recreational studies have found that water-based users prefer low use levels.…”

“…Many respondents reported that the number of visitors to the Lobau on Sundays was too high. Most studies using image-based DCEs in the fields of outdoor recreation and landscape preference stressed the important role of visitor numbers in respondents' choices [4,15,16,18,23,24,44]. However, the findings are mixed.…”

Blue Water Visitor Monitoring Potential: A Literature Review and Alternative Proposal

“…For example, a recreational area may only allow access through ticket sales at particular gates or may only be accessible via a guided tour, which would allow counting based upon ticket or tour sales. These methods have been used in many areas to obtain not only visitor counts, [15][16][17], but also socio-demographic changes in visitor use (e.g., [18]), visitor use in protected areas (e.g., [19]), and evaluations of user recreation fees in the U.S. Forest Service (e.g., [20][21][22]).…”