{"title":"Thinking big: The role of mega trails in creating meaning and sense of place to conserve large landscapes","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jort.2024.100812","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Providing access to natural areas through recreation is a valuable strategy for garnering social support for nature conservation. Direct experiences bring landscapes into people's perceptible realms and create sense of place and place meaning. This meaning can even be transferred to similar areas through a brand effect. Mega trails can play a role in creating meaning and sense of place for large landscapes. We investigated the sense of place and its spatial scale among hikers on the three national scenic trails forming the triple crown of hiking in the USA (Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trail) and discusses their potential to promote nature conservation at large landscape scales. We surveyed 602 hikers and assessed the level of sense of place and its spatial scale using Likert scales and heatmaps. Analyses of variance were performed to explore their relationships with hike duration, motivation, and trail section popularity. Results suggest that the longer the hiking, the stronger and broader the sense of place. Hikers motivated by national scenic trails present a stronger and broader sense of place, and this difference occurs even among day hikers, suggesting a brand effect. Implementing and promoting mega trails can create extensive meaningful places, facilitating the understanding of ecological processes and helping to promote large-scale nature conservation. Through the brand effect, mega trails have the potential to reach a wider audience, going beyond long-distance hikers and raising the awareness of millions of people who hike at least a short trail section about the importance of large-scale conservation.</p></div><div><h3>Management implications</h3><p>By offering long experiences in contact with nature, mega trails are associated with a greater sense of place and on a broader spatial scale. These trails help create meaning for large landscapes, raising support for their conservation. Furthermore, mega trails also create brands that reach an audience beyond long-distance hikers. Investing in mega trails that connect large landscapes or cross geographical features, such as biomes or mountain ranges, can help build support to promote connectivity across these landscapes. Corridors protected by mega trails can even facilitate species range shifts in response to climate change, acting as climate corridors.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46931,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism-Research Planning and Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism-Research Planning and Management","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221307802400080X","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Providing access to natural areas through recreation is a valuable strategy for garnering social support for nature conservation. Direct experiences bring landscapes into people's perceptible realms and create sense of place and place meaning. This meaning can even be transferred to similar areas through a brand effect. Mega trails can play a role in creating meaning and sense of place for large landscapes. We investigated the sense of place and its spatial scale among hikers on the three national scenic trails forming the triple crown of hiking in the USA (Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trail) and discusses their potential to promote nature conservation at large landscape scales. We surveyed 602 hikers and assessed the level of sense of place and its spatial scale using Likert scales and heatmaps. Analyses of variance were performed to explore their relationships with hike duration, motivation, and trail section popularity. Results suggest that the longer the hiking, the stronger and broader the sense of place. Hikers motivated by national scenic trails present a stronger and broader sense of place, and this difference occurs even among day hikers, suggesting a brand effect. Implementing and promoting mega trails can create extensive meaningful places, facilitating the understanding of ecological processes and helping to promote large-scale nature conservation. Through the brand effect, mega trails have the potential to reach a wider audience, going beyond long-distance hikers and raising the awareness of millions of people who hike at least a short trail section about the importance of large-scale conservation.
Management implications
By offering long experiences in contact with nature, mega trails are associated with a greater sense of place and on a broader spatial scale. These trails help create meaning for large landscapes, raising support for their conservation. Furthermore, mega trails also create brands that reach an audience beyond long-distance hikers. Investing in mega trails that connect large landscapes or cross geographical features, such as biomes or mountain ranges, can help build support to promote connectivity across these landscapes. Corridors protected by mega trails can even facilitate species range shifts in response to climate change, acting as climate corridors.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism offers a dedicated outlet for research relevant to social sciences and natural resources. The journal publishes peer reviewed original research on all aspects of outdoor recreation planning and management, covering the entire spectrum of settings from wilderness to urban outdoor recreation opportunities. It also focuses on new products and findings in nature based tourism and park management. JORT is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary journal, articles may focus on any aspect of theory, method, or concept of outdoor recreation research, planning or management, and interdisciplinary work is especially welcome, and may be of a theoretical and/or a case study nature. Depending on the topic of investigation, articles may be positioned within one academic discipline, or draw from several disciplines in an integrative manner, with overarching relevance to social sciences and natural resources. JORT is international in scope and attracts scholars from all reaches of the world to facilitate the exchange of ideas. As such, the journal enhances understanding of scientific knowledge, empirical results, and practitioners'' needs. Therefore in JORT each article is accompanied by an executive summary, written by the editors or authors, highlighting the planning and management relevant aspects of the article.