A study of visitor impact management practices and visitor satisfaction at Eravikulam National Park, India

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) achieve recognition and enhanced protection when a sufficient number of tourists visit and appreciate them and influence policy to assure their survival. Despite the growing importance, little attention has been paid to visitor satisfaction in PAs. Visitor experience and satisfaction may be influenced by many attributes of PAs. The present study is an attempt to examine the effect of visitor impact management (VIM) practices on visitor experience and satisfaction concerning eco and wildlife tourism at Eravikulam National Park (ENP). VIM is a component of PA management and is required to ensure a high level of visitor experience, education, facilities, and services. For this purpose, researchers have measured the socio-economic profile of visitors and various attributes viz. tourism activities (TA), environmental impacts (ENI), socio-cultural impacts (SCI), visitor impact management (VIM), visitor education (VE), and overall satisfaction of visitors (OSA).The results of the study show that VIM is significantly and positively correlated with VE, OSA of visitors. (VIM, TA, ENI, SCI, VE) explained partial variation in the criterion variable viz., OSA.

Keywords

• Protected areas
• Visitor satisfaction
• National Park
• Visitor education
• Sociocultural impact
• Visitor impact management