Demand for bear viewing hikes: Implications for balancing visitor satisfaction with safety in protected areas

Wildlife viewing is a popular activity in wilderness recreation areas. However, a desire to avoid human-wildlife conflicts often results in trail restrictions; though meant to safeguard visitor safety, these restrictions can curtail park visitors' opportunities to see wildlife against their wishes and limit a park's economic benefits for the local community. Visitor demand for wildlife viewing must be balanced against the need for public safety. Little research has been conducted on the balance between wildlife-viewing opportunities and human safety. This study uses a discrete choice experiment to quantify park visitors' willingness to pay to view brown bears (Ursus arctos) on hiking trails in Japan's Daisetsuzan National Park. A latent class model is applied to capture preference heterogeneity among park visitors. The results reveal that two visitor groups-non-local and local-are involved. Non-local visitors evince significant demand for bear viewing and bear-related lectures from trained guides. They also prefer group tours and round-trip hikes that include currently restricted areas. On the other hand, local visitors are not interested in either bear viewing or group tours; they do not want extra information from the guide but prefer to hike to the closest destination from the trailhead. These results suggest that implementing a variety of zoning management practices and well-designed nature-based tours in bear habitat areas can improve visitor satisfaction and provide new economic benefits while also protecting visitors from bear attacks.Management implications
- The present study has shown that the introducing organized bear viewing tours can create a win-win situation for park visitors and a local community.
- This study has demonstrated that bear viewing tours do not only satisfy with visitors' demand for bear viewing but also enhance their safety by promoting group-hiking in a bear habitat.
- This study strengthens the idea that bear viewing tours provide new economic benefits to the local community while avoiding unexplained trail restrictions.