Ecotourism spatio-temporal models to identify visitation patterns across the Indian Himalayan Region

Abstract

Visitation patterns across protected areas of Uttarakhand, India reflect a unique amalgamation of natural, cultural and religious aspects of vulnerable mountain tourism destinations. These aspects act as predictors in determining visitation rates and identifying destination specific tourism models. Using the mixed methods approach based on field surveys, geotagged photographs and InVEST recreation tool, this study (1) maps the spatio-temporal movement of visitors across ten sampled protected areas of Uttarakhand (2) identifies predictor variables contributing to visitation across Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary (BWLS) of Uttarakhand (3) explores the visitors’ decision to recreate at specific locations across BWLS based on four tourism models and (4) determines the prevalent tourism model across BWLS. The visitation pattern assessment suggest Rajaji National Park as the most visited protected area in Uttarakhand, but the highest density of photographed location existed within the Corbett National Park. That, visitation to National Park outnumbers visitation to wildlife sanctuaries in Uttarakhand and preferably over the months of March–April (Spring) and October–November (Winter). Binomial logistic regression analysis on Flickr generated photographs reveals community-based ecotourism as the prevalent tourism model across Binsar. Human settlements and natural water springs of the sanctuary were key predictors affecting visitation in Binsar. The grounded nature of this research presents the ecotourism interacting variables addressing spatial movement of visitors across protected areas of critical importance, to manage tourism destinations sustainably.