Crowding norms in marine settings: A case study of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef

Research on crowding in natural environments has traditionally been concerned with encounters in terrestrial settings. Increased visitation to tropical marine environments, however, has meant that evaluations of aesthetic quality are increasingly becoming issues for managers of marine parks. In this study, we used image-capture techniques to develop a series of above- and below-water images depicting different numbers of people snorkeling in a coral reef setting. The presence of safety facilities in the above-water settings was manipulated to examine the influence of human-made structures on perception of crowding. Four respondent groups—a scuba-diving club, local residents, tourists, and US university students—representing different levels of experience in marine recreation on the Great Barrier Reef, were asked to rate the acceptability of each image. Ratings were significantly influenced by the number of people in the images, the prior experience and gender of the respondents, and the presence of safety infrastructure. Experienced scuba divers preferred scenes without people or infrastructure, while novices regarded the presence of both as more acceptable. The results suggest that evaluations of social density and crowding may vary between below-water scenes and the more familiar abovewater setting. A lack of concordance between how respondents rated the images and their nominated preferences for the number of other people in the settings highlights a need for more research on how perceptions of resource conditions should be measured in marine environments