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Abstract |
A major determinant of visitor use of outdoor recreation opportunities in PNAs is ambient weather at place – specifically, the four key variables of temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation. Visitors routinely assess ambient weather before undertaking a range of recreational activities in the outdoors, evaluating the key variables – individually and in combination – relative to both personal preferences and the planned actvity at place. Weather at place may vary widely from year to year, masking underlying changes in visitation demand. Furthermore, the influence of ambient weather conditions on visitation varies widely from place to place, such that the same conditions may deter a significant number of visitors to one place, while generating little to no deterence at others – and may even encourage visitation. Consequently, understanding the influence of weather on visitation is a core consideration for visitor management at the operations level, but increasingly also at the strategic investment level as historic weather patterns are modified by climate change. However, at the place/destination scale of analysis, separating the influence of weather on visitation from other influences, such as visitor preference, is complex; when the scale of analysis expands to the national level, the challenge becomes daunting. Nevertheless, PNA managers need to make informed decisions on long-term investment in visitor services and infrastructure based on underlying demand trends and trajectories, and the extent to which these are influenced by weather is therefore a critical consideration. To address this current uncertainty, the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) has developed a statistical tool to quantify the weather sensitivity of several hundred visitor destinations across its portfolio of PNAs. |
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