Assessing visitor perceptions of recreation benefits from nearby public lands

Shifting national priorities and social values for public lands recreation require proactive management decisions that respond to diverse visitor needs. Emerging policy and practice also indicate a need to better understand how local communities benefit from recreation trends on public lands, including whether visitors engage with community services as part of their recreation experience. The research presented here utilized an intercept survey of recreationists on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in southeastern Idaho to explore how recreation benefits relate to intended future visits. We also focus on the importance of desired community benefits resulting from recreation on nearby public lands, which are noted as understudied components in recreation literature. Results indicate that higher levels of desired personal, community, economic, and environmental benefits correlate with greater likelihood of returning to the study area, though only community benefits remained significant when controlling for all benefit categories. We also found significant interactions between recreationists' desired community benefits and desired environmental benefits, and between desired personal benefits and desired economic benefits. Desirability of four recreation benefit categories differed significantly among visitors to the two adjacent BLM planning units sampled as part of the research. In sum, our results suggest that desired community benefits may influence distinct, yet important components of recreationists' overall experiences. We suggest a need for in-depth assessments of local and nonlocal recreationists' desires for area community benefits, as these benefits may significantly influence other aspects of visitor needs, including intentions to return to public lands.