In Focus: Denali Park Road: The Denali Park Road experience: Indicators and standards of quality
Manning RE and Hallo JC. 2010. In Focus: Denali Park Road: The Denali Park Road experience: Indicators and standards of quality. Park Science. 27(2):33–41
Contemporary frameworks for managing parks and outdoor recreation, like the National Park Service’s (NPS) Visitor Experience and Resource Protection (VERP) framework, rely on indicators and standards of quality as empirical measures of management objectives or desired conditions. This study identified indicators and standards for the Denali Park Road experience based on data from 126 interviews and 707 questionnaires. Indicators that may be used to measure and manage this experience include number of buses seen along the road, number of buses at informal wildlife stops, waiting time to see wildlife at informal wildlife stops, number of buses and people at rest stops, and percentage chance of seeing a grizzly bear. Potential standards for these were then identified based on visitor evaluations of photos or narrative descriptions representing a range of conditions for each indicator variable. For example, visitors’ mean acceptability ratings fall out of the acceptable range and into the unacceptable range when more than five buses are visible along the road. This value represents one possible standard for measuring and managing crowding on the Denali Park Road. In keeping with the VERP framework, findings from this program of research should be combined with other information to define and guide management of the visitor experience on the Denali Park Road. Indicators should be monitored and management actions taken to ensure that standards of quality are maintained. In this way, the carrying capacity of the Denali Park Road can be defined and managed. However, a more proactive approach is also possible by incorporating these indicators and standards into a simulation model that estimates the maximum number of vehicles that can be accommodated on the road without violating standards of quality.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Manning, Robert; Hallo, Jeffrey
- Units
- DENA , NRSS
- Keywords
- Carrying Capacity, Denali National Park, norms, VERP (Visitor Experience and Resource Protection framework), Visitor Experience