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Abstract |
Crowding management is an important issue in the field of natural recreation. Our study site at Shiretoko National Park is one of Japans most popular natural recreation areas, visited by over 1 million visitors every year. Particularly in the summer season, many visitors want to observe bears, causing crowding problems. To solve these crowding issues, it is essential to determine the appropriate carrying capacity in natural recreation areas. To this end, investigating visitors crowding perceptions (crowding norms) is necessary. There are various approaches to measuring visitors crowding norms. More recently, visual approaches have been widely applied. This approach enables the identification of respondents crowding norms by asking them to identify the most acceptable level of crowding using photographs or illustrations (Manning & Freimund, 2004). As this approach uses photographs or illustrations, respondents can visibly recognize and recall the places in question (Manning & Freimund, 2004). Many studies investigating visitors crowding norms have been conducted using field and web- based surveys. However, researchers have given limited attention to explaining how crowding norms differ between fields and potential visitors. When determining the appropriate carrying capacity in natural recreation areas, it is necessary to consider both visitor types crowding norms; this paper investigates these, providing suggestions for determining the appropriate carrying capacity. |
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