Acceptability and appeal: How visitors’ perceptions of sounds can contribute to shared learning and transdisciplinary protected area governance

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how protected area (PA) acoustic environments , or soundscapes, can provide a boundary object for transdisciplinary conservation governance, informing and facilitating better communication, transdisciplinary learning, and decision making. Through visitor intercepts and on-site listening exercises (N = 899), research examined the appeal and acceptability of perceived sounds, to understand the congruence between visitors’ ratings for the ten open-coded sound categories that emerged. Discussion presents a hypothetical transdisciplinary governance scenario demonstrating how actors can employ similar research to advance collaborative transdisciplinary conservation learning and governance, through collaborative consideration of emergent trends across sound categories and local, national, and international tourist visitor groups. For example, all participants frequently observed Birds, Forest, and Water sounds, as highly appealing and acceptable. This aligns well with core natural PA attributes and conservation objectives. Wind and Insect sounds were less appealing, particularly for international tourists; yet considered acceptable within the PA, for all groups. Perhaps divergence can be addressed through programming and/or infrastructure. Low acceptability for Machine sounds should concern conservation governance; participants seemingly did not connect machine sounds with important PA conservation practices. • Soundscape research can assist collaborative stakeholder ecological governance and learning. • Research employs soundscape acceptability/appeal measures for transdisciplinary governance. • Assessing congruence in acceptability and appeal helps gauge visitor understanding of PA values. • Better visitor understanding/education around human-nature soundscape relationships is needed.