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The diverse and omnipresent social media platforms in contemporary society have fundamentally changed the way people interact with their world. Parks and protected areas are no exception. Although outdoor recreation and tourism research has embraced social media from a utilitarian perspective, very few studies evaluate how social media influences visitor use, experiences, and behaviors. This research note is designed to provide a research agenda for investigating the relationship between social media, visitor use and experience, and parks and protected areas. It identifies four critical themes that act as a platform for further research with respect to social media: 1) the influence of social media on visitor behaviors, 2) using social media to enhance and facilitate the visitor experience, 3) reaching intended audiences, and 4) understanding management perspectives. Collectively, inquiry into these four themes can improve our understanding of how social media influences contemporary and future management of parks and protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare revealed preference and survey response estimates of changes in National Park visitation behavior from climate change. The revealed preference model is estimated from a time-series regression analysis of past visitation as a function of historic weather variability. We find no statistical difference between the revealed preference regression estimates and intended behavior estimates from a visitor survey for the total number of National Park visits. Confidence intervals for the two models overlap, and the mean estimates of the change in visitation are within 12% of each other. The paper concludes with the implications for natural resource planners and managers who must frequently evaluate the effects of alternative policies before the selection of a preferred alternative, and also must plan for accommodating changes in visitor use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An investigation of ecotourism at Masoala National Park, a forested coastal area in northeastern Madagascar and the country's largest national park, focused on ecotourism benefits and the role of local guides in promoting conservation awareness. Interviews, participant observation, and archival research were used to investigate the park's guide association, resident attitudes toward Masoala National Park, and ecotourism as a method of park and rural development. Many factors make Masoala National Park a prime ecotourist destination, including the possibility of viewing its endemic species, such as red-ruffed lemurs. The park has a strong local guides' association and currently combines conservation and development through a programme that returns a portion of tourism revenue to local communities. Actual or potential benefits received from the park, including ecotourism revenues, were found to influence the positive and negative perceptions of Masoala National Park held by residents living in the park periphery. However, limitations on ecotourism development include poor infrastructure and difficult access, a challenging climate including a hurricane season, and past national political instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of 688 state parks and 41 national parks shows that total trail length in a park has a significant decelerating scaling relationship with park area. Larger parks have much lower trail densities (less trail per acre) than smaller parks. A decelerating scaling pattern is also found when the number of annual visitors is regressed onto park area. Larger parks have fewer visitors per acre of park. Since trails and visitors are major sources of disturbance for many species of wildlife and plants in most reserves, these scaling patterns have important conservation implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]