{"title":"Towards a digital ranger: Using data from outdoor platforms to detect rule violations in protected areas and improve visitor management","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jort.2024.100835","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Protected areas aim to preserve nature and biodiversity while also providing space for outdoor activities and recreation. Visitor management, ideally based on visitor monitoring data, is crucial to balance conservation goals with the requirements of recreationists. Regulations such as prohibiting off-trail movements and temporal restrictions on the access to certain trails or areas are among the most common measures used to minimize the negative impacts of recreation on conservation goods in protected areas. In recent years, online platforms and outdoor apps have become an increasingly popular data source for visitor monitoring, but few studies have made use of their data to detect rule violations in protected areas. In this study, track data obtained from the online platforms Outdooractive and Bikemap were used to analyze the spatial distribution of hikers and bikers in the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany, and thus to identify and localize rule violations. The analysis showed that the most frequently used trails followed the designated trail network. However, 15% of the hiking tracks and 31% of the bike tracks did not comply with national park rules and instead followed informal trails, were off-trail or disregarded temporal restrictions. Popular places for hikers were identified as well including mountain peaks, raised bogs, mountain pastures, lakes and streams, mainly in areas at higher elevations. Cyclists clustered in areas of lower elevation and on the outskirts of the national park. Knowledge derived from online tracks is helpful in developing management strategies for better visitor steering. Such measures can take place in the field as well as online to influence content on outdoor platforms and proactively communicate protected area information to visitors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46931,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism-Research Planning and Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","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/S2213078024001038","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
Protected areas aim to preserve nature and biodiversity while also providing space for outdoor activities and recreation. Visitor management, ideally based on visitor monitoring data, is crucial to balance conservation goals with the requirements of recreationists. Regulations such as prohibiting off-trail movements and temporal restrictions on the access to certain trails or areas are among the most common measures used to minimize the negative impacts of recreation on conservation goods in protected areas. In recent years, online platforms and outdoor apps have become an increasingly popular data source for visitor monitoring, but few studies have made use of their data to detect rule violations in protected areas. In this study, track data obtained from the online platforms Outdooractive and Bikemap were used to analyze the spatial distribution of hikers and bikers in the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany, and thus to identify and localize rule violations. The analysis showed that the most frequently used trails followed the designated trail network. However, 15% of the hiking tracks and 31% of the bike tracks did not comply with national park rules and instead followed informal trails, were off-trail or disregarded temporal restrictions. Popular places for hikers were identified as well including mountain peaks, raised bogs, mountain pastures, lakes and streams, mainly in areas at higher elevations. Cyclists clustered in areas of lower elevation and on the outskirts of the national park. Knowledge derived from online tracks is helpful in developing management strategies for better visitor steering. Such measures can take place in the field as well as online to influence content on outdoor platforms and proactively communicate protected area information to visitors.
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.