Coping Behavior to Avoid Visitor Encounters: Its Relationship to Wildland Privacy

Abstract

Too many visitor encounters can detract from the privacy sought in wildland environments. Coping behavior to avoid or adjust to visitor encounters is one procedure for reducing encounters and maintaining wildland privacy. This paper examines the degree to which backpackers in Great Smoky Mountains National Park used six physical and six social coping behaviors to avoid encounters/interactions with other backpackers. The influences of solitude importance, encounter norms, and level of backpacker experience on visitor use of coping behaviors were analyzed also. Most respondents used social coping behaviors infrequently, except for reducing social interactions with backpackers in other parties. However, physical coping behaviors were used more often than social coping behaviors. The importance of solitude to visitors was related significantly to adoption of all six physical coping behaviors but to none of the social coping behaviors. Visitors who had lower encounter norms and who were more sensitive to actual encounters experienced participated significantly more often in 10 of the 12 coping behaviors. Level of past experience had little influence on use of coping behaviors. The findings are interpreted in the context of coping behavior as a means of avoiding or adjusting to visitor encounters in wildland recreation areas. The role that coping behavior may serve to control environmental conditions and desired level of wildland privacy is discussed, also.