This report is the first summary and analysis of the state offices of outdoor recreation. It provides a starting point for land management agencies, state and local governments, industry, nonprofits, and other partners to better understand the origins and missions of newly-formed state offices of outdoor recreation. It also provides best practices for states considering the establishment of their own office of outdoor recreation, as well as recommendations to the current state offices and the National Park Service to facilitate collaboration.
Traditional methods of estimating demand for recreation areas involve making inferences about individuals' preferences. Frequently, the assumption is made that recreationists' cost of traveling to a site is a reliable measure of the value they place on that resource and the recreation opportunities it provides. This assumption may ignore other important social-psychological factors influencing individuals' behavior. In this study, the authors augment a traditional travel cost model with several of these factors, namely, individuals' social-psychological attachment to the resource and their motivations for recreating there. Using data collected from two visitor use surveys of recreational rivers, the authors find that individuals' affective and emotional attachments to recreation settings as well as certain desired recreation experiences have significant effects on recreation demand. These results reveal that various social-psychological constructs can be incorporated into a traditional travel cost model to create empirically and theoretically more robust estimates of recreation demand.
Abstract Ideological value sets have the potential to shape individuals' preferences as well as their psychological and behavioral responses to new information. Being socially constructed, ideologies are likely to be formed and modified through the exchanges individuals have in their established information and communication networks. This study examined whether or not individuals' political ideologies and their access to climate-related information are related to several key factors influencing their perceived capacity to adapt to climate-driven changes to local forest conditions. The key factors investigated include: perceived risk; the willingness to learn about potential impacts; the willingness to plan for variable climate futures; and a general perception of self-efficacy. Data come from a mail survey completed by 420 full-time residents living in three amenity-rich forest-related communities in western North Carolina (United States). The results suggest individuals' political ideologies are related to some, but not all, of the information sources asked about. The results also suggest political ideologies are related to perceived risk, with conservatives perceiving climate-driven changes to local forest conditions as more severe relative to liberals. These findings have several implications regarding the effective dissemination of information related to how increasingly variable climate conditions may affect local forest conditions.
This research examines how the operating expenditures of America's state park systems will be affected by a continued growth in attendance consistent with observed trends as well as potential climate futures. We construct a longitudinal panel dataset (1984–2017) describing the operations and characteristics of all 50 state park systems. These data are analyzed with a time-varying stochastic frontier model. Estimates from the model are used to forecast operating expenditures to midcentury under four different scenarios. The first scenario assumes annual attendance within each state park system will continue to grow (or decline) at the same average annual rate that it has over the period of observation. The subsequent scenarios assume statewide annual mean temperatures will increase following the RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 greenhouse gas emissions trajectories. Operating expenditures under a scenario where annual growth in attendance stays consistent with observed trends are forecasted to increase 756% by midcentury; this is an order of magnitude larger than projected expenditures under any of the climate scenarios. The future climate change scenarios yielded increases in operating expenditures between 25% (RCP2.6) and 61% (RCP8.5) by 2050. Attendance is the single largest factor affecting the operations of America's state park systems, dwarfing the influence of climate change, which is significant and nontrivial. The future of America's state park systems will depend upon increased support from state legislatures, as well as management actions that generate funds for the maintenance of existing infrastructure and facilities, and the provisioning of services.
AbstractThis research analyzes individuals' perceived resilience to changing climatic conditions. Specifically, we suggest individual resilience is composed of an awareness of localized risks created because of climate change, a willingness to learn about, and plan for, the potential impacts of altered environmental conditions, and general appraisals of personal adaptive capacities. We hypothesize that resilience is influenced by the characteristics of individuals' social networks and also by their social‐psychological dependence on local environments. Using data collected in three resource‐associated communities within the southeastern United States, our analysis suggests bonding ties may limit individuals' willingness to seek new information about the potential impacts of climate change. Conversely, the data suggest the use of a diverse array of bridging ties is positively associated with information‐seeking behavior. The data also support our hypothesis that individuals' social psychological dependencies on the local environment influences their perceived resilience to changing climatic conditions. By gaining a clearer understanding of how individuals' social networks and social‐psychological dependencies affect their perceived ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions, decision makers can focus on policy solutions that increase adaptive capacities and build social resilience.
