Managing off-trail walking behaviour in national parks

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this viewpoint paper is to provide practical managerial strategies to address the problematic behaviour of visitor non-compliance at national parks. This paper provides a descriptive overview of current non-compliant behaviours in national parks and offer suggested practical solutions and directions. Although past studies have explored the underlying motivations behind visitor non-compliance in national parks, research on management tactics to curb this problematic behaviour remains limited. Therefore, more attention is needed to solve this perennial issue. While most national parks use a combination of both direct and indirect management tactics to manage off-trail walking behaviour, it is recommended park managers try using indirect management tools first before converting to rigid authoritative direct management approaches to manage non-compliant behaviours in national parks. This paper also advocates for future research to identify reasons behind non-compliant behaviour in national parks and examine the effectiveness of direct and indirect management tools across different visitor segments to address this problematic behaviour.