Does it Matter Whether Visitors Know Whether the Site they ar Visiting is in a World Heritage Area

The paper addresses this knowledge, awareness, status question in a variety of ways. Firstly it examines the awareness of visitors of the World Heritage Area (WHA) status of the Wet Tropics, their ability to fully appreciate its attributes and qualities, the potential of this awareness to appreciably change the expectations, experience, appreciation, or behaviour of visitors, and how WHA awareness can sensitise and direct attention, perceptions, involvements, and judgements. Secondly, consideration is given to the communication of the World Heritage status of a site, what such status means to the average visitor and local resident, whether this is a necessary and/or important part of the management agency’s responsibility to present the Area, and whether it is an integral and effective part of managing visitor impacts. Understanding how important and consequential profiling and branding of a protected area as a WHA to broader visitation and use is clearly essential from a management perspective. These topics are addressed through a consideration of research findings from a number of successive surveys of visitors and local residents undertaken in the Wet Tropics bioregion and at visitor sites within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA). The questions and findings are also considered from an environmental psychological perspective which examines the WHA experience and encounter of the individual visitor, and the importance of a WHA mindfulness to this experience