Abstract
Few studies have examined visitor preferences with regard to public bike-sharing inside national parks. Here, we present a case study of the Teide National Park (TNP), the most visited national park in Spain. The TNP is a clear example of a natural site suffering the effects of mass tourism, largely due to the fact that 70% of visitors access the TNP by car. This puts the park’s sustainability under considerable pressure, may well affect visitor enjoyment, and highlights the need to implement alternative transportation systems. The main aim of this paper is to assess the attitudes of visitors to the TNP towards the implementation of a public bike-sharing system. To do so, we combine information on revealed and stated preferences and estimate ordered logit models to establish the determinants of the propensity to choose the bicycle to move around the park. Our findings suggest that the bicycle has potential as a means of transport in this setting. The results have implications for the design of mobility management measures aiming to increase visit quality and reduce the negative externalities associated with mobility patterns in national parks.
Highlights
The use of bicycles by tourists has increased rapidly in Europe in recent years
This paper aims to fill the research gap in visitor preferences on public bike-sharing in natural environments and to contribute to the growing body of knowledge regarding the assumptions underlying the issue of tourism mobility [13]
Regarding the impact of the access mode on the propensity to cycle in the park, we can conclude that access by private vehicle seems to favour the use of bicycles, since the results suggest that the probability of the categories with a low propensity of use would be reduced (Y = 0, Y = 1 and Y = 2) and the probability of the categories in which it is higher would increase (Y = 3 and Y = 4), showing elastic values in the extreme categories
Summary
The use of bicycles by tourists has increased rapidly in Europe in recent years. The rise in cycle tourism is reflected in the growing number of national parks in which bicycles are permitted. In the UK, there are numerous examples (the Cairngorms, Pembrokeshire Coast, Dartmoor, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, the Peak District, the New Forest, Exmoor, and so on). In the US, the national parks offering bicycle rentals include Grand Canyon, Acadia, and Valley Forge. The first national park to offer bike-sharing was De Hoge Veluwe in the Netherlands, which started its “white bike” scheme in 1975 [1]. The growth of the white bike fleet reflects the public’s positive attitudes towards using a bicycle during their visits to the park
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