Service Quality Measures: Recreationists' Perceptions of US Pacific Northwest National Forests

Abstract

This study empirically evaluated two models of service quality pertaining to recreationists who visited a Pacific Northwest National Forest. The use of service quality ratings to measure an agency's provision of recreation services, facilities, information, experiences and so forth has grown substantially over the past decade. Greater examination of an overall measure of service quality is needed, as well as a better understanding of what specific items and service quality dimensions best predict overall service quality. In this study, the dependent variable (overall service quality) was operationalised by creating an index of quality domains. The results showed that the quality items were very good predictors of their respective domains, and that the same items were very good predictors of overall service quality. Overall these models were found to be excellent predictive models that accounted for a very high proportion of the variance. The first model, regressing the quality items on the quality dimensions, accounted for 28–50% of the variance, while about 71% of the variance was accounted for when regressing the quality items on the overall service quality measure. The results of this study add to the body of literature suggesting the use of a multiple-item index as a dependent measure of overall service quality rather than a single-item indicator of overall service quality. Additionally, the service quality items and dimensions used in this study contribute to a larger body of literature focused on developing a model of service quality that can be practically applied in an outdoor recreation setting.