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Park, Logan Oliver Baetcke

Natural Resources

2006

MS

Cadillac Mountain is an icon (i.e., attraction) feature of Acadia National Park, Maine. The mountain summit offers sweeping views of the park and surrounding ocean, and is easily accessible by road and trail. Consequently, the summit accommodates as many as 5,500 visits per day during the summer use season. However, the summit is a sub-alpine environment characterized by thin soils and fragile vegetation. Many visitors walk off the paved summit loop trail and this has led to substantial and growing environmental impacts. The literature on park management suggests that a range of management alternatives might be used to keep visitors on the paved trail and to limit their impacts. These alternatives include "indirect" practices (such as information and education) that are designed to encourage visitors to adopt appropriate behavior and "direct" practices (such as regulation and site management) that attempt to force visitors to limit their impacts. But which of these practices are most effective? And how do these management practices affect the quality of the visitor experience? To answer these questions, a series of experimental management practices were implemented on the summit of Cadillac Mountain in the summer of 2005. The management practices included directive signage, educational signage, reminder signage, spoken educational messages with ethical appeals, and fencing. Unobtrusive observation of visitors walking off-trail was used to measure the effectiveness of the management practices, and a visitor survey was used to assess the impacts of the management practices on the quality of the visitor experience. Study findings show statistically significant and substantive differences in visitor behavior among the experimental management practices, as well as differences in visitor opinions as to the appropriateness of the management practices.