Designing a Sampling System for Concurrently Measuring Outdoor Recreation Visitation and Describing Visitor Characteristics

Abstract: Two primary information needs for managing recreation areas and the visitors to those areas are: (1) good estimates of visitation volume, and (2) accurate descriptions of visitor characteristics, such as length of stay, frequency of visit, and primary activity. For National Forests in the United States of America with large undeveloped areas, efficient sampling for the two types of information may be to a large extent incompatible. Sampling plans that address visitation volume issues allocate most of the sample days to the largest and most internally variable strata. Sampling plans for studies of visitor char-acteristics allocate sampling effort to locations that most efficiently provide visitor information, such as at developed sites. Additionally, sampling plans for studies of visitor characteristics may need to ensure spatial or temporal dispersion of the sample, in order to ensure adequate representation of different visitor sub-groups. A method is demonstrated for allocating days into sampling strata which balances the contri-bution of sample days in improving the accuracy of the total visitation estimate with the contribution of the sample day to maximizing the quantity and dispersion of visitor information. The resulting sampling allocation provides an optimal solution to address both of the information needs through a single data collection effort. A second phase of the method addresses how to ensure spatial and temporal dispersion of sampling effort. Examples of applications on National Forests in the United States are provided