Browsing by department "Geotieteiden ja maantieteenlaitos"

Nuuksio National Park is one of the most popular recreational areas in Finland. The park faces strong and constantly growing recreational pressure from Helsinki Metropolitan Area, which has led to crowding problems among park visitors during high season. The situation will become even more critical when Finnish Nature Centre Haltia will bee opened nearby the Park in 2013. This paper is one of the first ones in Finland that focuses on the experience of crowding in the context of outdoor recreation. Moreover, this paper has been influenced by North American research tradition. The purpose of this paper is to form action plans to minimize the experience of crowding in Nuuksio National Park. The paper proceeds according to recreational opportunity spectrum framework (ROS). First, it reviews what kind of social experience environments Nuuksio National Park has to offer from the perspective of crowding. Second, it explains what kind of social experiences different visitor groups wish to achieve. With the help of demand and supply information, this paper outlines how to manage park visitors in order to help them find the kind of recreational areas that offer social experiences according to their expectations. The paper was carried out as a quantitative survey-research. The primary data was collected in Nuuksio National Park during summer 2011. Data included 122 structured interviews directed to park visitors. The survey used visual research method and softGIS-method to measure both the experience of crowding as well as the parks visitors attitudes towards the amount of other recreational users. The paper also uses Nuuksio National Park visitor survey 2009 2010 as a secondary data. Both data were analyzed with statistical methods. The study shows that visitor concentration especially in Haukkalampi area and fireplaces nearby lead to extensive experience of crowding. Another main finding is that overnight visitors are more sensitive to the experience of crowding than other visitors. They were also proven to tolerate less other recreational users. As an action plan the paper recommends to divide visitor pressure more even between the different entrances of the park. The paper also recommends focusing on the sufficiency of fireplaces and campsites as well as profiling those for different user groups. In addition, it is important to create more realistic expectations of the amount of visitors among recreational users. An important action plan is also to focus on the education of park visitors, as this has a major effect on the experience of crowding.