Crowding in European forests: a review of recent research and implications for forest management and policy

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© Institute of Chartered Foresters, 2008. All rights reserved. Forestry, Vol. 81, No. 4, 2008. doi:10.1093/forestry/cpn034 For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org Advance Access publication date 21 July 2008 Introduction

Knowledge about the recreation quality expected by forest visitors and the perceived impacts is necessary to be able to manage forests on a sus-tainable basis. While the ecological impacts of recreation use have been a central topic in for-est recreation research for ~ 30 years in Europe (e.g. Volk, 1979 ; Weiger, 1982 ; Volk et al. , 1995 ; Schemel and Erbguth, 2000 ; Ingold, 2005 ), so-cial impacts such as user conﬂ icts – in particular crowding – have rarely been investigated. This is surprising, as most forests – particularly those in Central Europe – are within the reach of many

day users from urban areas or are situated within city limits. As a result, most of these forests face high and increasing recreational use pressure. Therefore, crowding may become a more promi-nent issue in recreation management.

In times of multi-purpose forestry ( Font and Tribe, 1999 ), the recreational use of forests is gaining greater importance and the need for infor-mation about crowding has become apparent for sustainable forest management in Europe. How-ever, the current status of European crowding re-search has neither, so far, been summarized nor analysed. The objective of this paper is to review the ﬁ ndings and the methodological approaches

Crowding in European forests:

a review of recent research and

implications for forest management

and policy

ARNE ARNBERGER

1

_{* and CARSTEN MANN}

2

1_{Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning, BOKU — University of Natural} Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Peter Jordan-Straße 82, 1190 Vienna, Austria

2_{UMR Métafort: Dynamics of Activities, Spaces and Organisation forms in Rural Areas, Cemagref, 24 avenue} des Landais, BP 50085, 63172 Aubière Cedex, France

* Corresponding author. E-mail: arne.arnberger@boku.ac.at

Summary

This paper analyses and summarizes European research dealing with forest visitors ’ crowding perceptions. Compared with recreation research in North America, where crowding is an important topic, only 16 European crowding studies have been identiﬁ ed since the 1980s. Their focus lies on everyday users in rural and urban forest settings of Central and Northern Europe. In these studies between 10 and 64 per cent of the respondents perceived crowding. Most studies used the same theoretical foundation oriented towards US recreation crowding literature but differed in their methods of measuring crowding. As a result, the use of different scales and data collection methods restrict a nation- and Europe-wide comparison. There is a need for standardized crowding research in order to gain insights into cultural differences and commonalities for integrating forest recreation management into a sustainable framework for forest management.

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of studies on crowding in European forests and make recommendations for future studies that will increase their value in terms of comparable results and implications for forest management and policy.

Social – psychological paradigms as a basis for the crowding concept

The concept of crowding describes a negative evaluation of a certain density or number of en-counters in a given area (e.g. Schmidt and Keating, 1979 ; Shelby et al. , 1989 ). Recreation crowding research is rooted in the ﬁ eld of social psychology. Two social – psychological paradigms are predom-inantly used to explain the differences in crowding perceptions: the model of stimulus overload and the social interference model ( Gramann, 1982 ). The model of stimulus overload was derived from urban indoor settings. Crowding perceptions are maximized when the stimulation exceeds the pre-ferred level of contacts and individuals have no possibilities to reduce or substitute the stimuli creating a physical overload (e.g. Andereck and Becker, 1993 ). In contrast, crowding as a social interference prevents recreationists from achiev-ing their personal goals if these are based, for example, on solitude and silence which is not possible in some situations – e.g. in heavily used areas (e.g. Evans and Cohen, 1991 ).

Crowding research in North America

Crowding is considered as the most direct social impact on outdoor recreation and has, therefore, received a great deal of attention in the US (e.g. Shelby et al. , 1989 ; Vaske et al. , 1996 ; Manning, 1999 ; Vaske and Donnelly, 2002 ) and, to much a lower extent, in Canada (e.g. Sinclair and Reid, 1974 ; Needham et al. , 2004 ). Legislation such as the Wilderness Act (1964) was the driving force to examine this ﬁ eld of research in the 1970s in the US. The Wilderness Act established the right to experience solitude and contact with nature as fundamental, making it necessary for public authorities to provide primitive and unconﬁ ned recreational experiences. The incorporation of the social dimension for recreation users was therefore considered to be necessary for US forest recreation management (e.g. Wagar, 1974 ; Lee, 1977 ).

Research results have documented that high vis-itor densities lead to high encounter rates which might result in crowding and reduce the quality of an outdoor experience ( Absher and Lee, 1981 ; Shelby and Heberlein, 1986 ; Hall and Cole, 2007 ). Early recreation research assumed that the recreationist ’ s perception of crowding was pre-dominantly infl uenced by the number of visitors encountered and that this diminished recreation quality and satisfaction ( Lucas, 1964 ). In its long research history, however, it has been shown that the reality in the fi eld is much more complex, and that the perception of crowding is a multifaceted and subjective phenomenon, where the existence of various activities, user goals and preferences for social conditions make global statements dif-fi cult (e.g. Stankey, 1971 ; Vaske et al. , 2002 ).

Due to these differences, information about density or encounter rates alone is of limited value when explaining the potential for recre-ation confl ict ( Absher and Lee, 1981 ; Cole et al. , 1997 ; Vaske et al. , 2002 ; Hall and Cole, 2007 ). Researchers found the place, visitor activity and characteristics, type of user encountered, as well as user behaviour and culture, to be additional factors infl uencing crowding (e.g. Ruddell and Gramann, 1994 ; Vaske et al. , 1996 ; Vaske and Donnelly, 2002 ; Needham et al. , 2004 ). Usually, confl ict increases for users who are negatively af-fected by certain encounters. Consequently, these users are more sensitive to crowding. The per-sonal characteristics of the visitors, such as their motives and expectations, often signifi cantly in-fl uence crowding perceptions ( Stankey, 1971 ; Absher, 1979 ). For example, Stewart and Cole (2001) found that crowding had a strong nega-tive effect on visitors seeking solitude and silence. Also, belonging to an interest group can result in different tolerance levels towards encounters. Needham and Rollins (2005) showed that indi-viduals representing tourist-related companies accepted higher use densities than stakeholders from government agencies that manage the recre-ation area. Additionally, the individual ’ s expecta-tions are seen as reference points when evaluating a situation based on previous experiences ( Budruk et al. , 2002 ). Among the scientifi c community in Northern America, it is now widely accepted that differing visitor characteristics and resource conditions cause individuals to respond to visitor densities in a variety of ways.

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Several methods have been used to measure crowding ( Heberlein and Vaske, 1977 ) but one question format and scale dominates the crowd-ing literature ( Vaske et al. , 2002 ). This asks people to indicate how crowded the area was at the time of their visit. Responses are given on a nine-point Likert scale ( Figure 1 ). This single-item indicator is widely applied and has been used in many stud-ies across the US (see the review of Shelby et al. , 1989 ), Canada (e.g. Vaske et al. , 1996 ; Needham et al. , 2004 ), New Zealand (e.g. Martinson and Shelby, 1992 ), Australia (e.g. Inglis et al. , 1999 ) and Asia (e.g. Kim and Shelby, 1998 ) resulting in numerous crowding ratings for different settings and activities.

Over the past 30 years, normative crowding research in North America has made signiﬁ cant contributions to outdoor recreation research and management. Crowding norms are generally de-ﬁ ned as visitor-based standards that individuals and groups use for evaluating behaviour and so-cial conditions ( Vaske et al. , 1986 ; Donnelly et al. , 2000 ). The classical user-based normative ap-proach to crowding focused on standards for en-counter indicators ( Shelby and Heberlein, 1986 ; Vaske et al. , 1986 ). Verbal and visual approaches have been developed to determine recreation-ists ’ (e.g. Manning, 2007 ) and tourrecreation-ists ’ crowding norms (e.g. Needham et al. , 2004 ). Analyses of such data determine encounter norms and pro-duce norm curves, which trace the average ac-ceptability ratings of a sample of respondents for encountering a range of individuals or groups along a trail or at one site within a given period of time. The curve is generated by plotting the average responses on a graph where the horizon-tal axis represents the number of contacts and the vertical axis shows the evaluative response scale. The optimum contact level is the highest point on the curve; the lowest represents the least preferred condition ( Manning, 2007 ). The point where the norm curve crosses the neutral line of the response scale is considered the minimum

acceptable condition; and in many studies, this represented the standard of quality for encounter levels ( Manning, 2001 ). The range of acceptable conditions includes all points on the norm curve above the minimum acceptable condition. For ex-ample, Manning (2007) presented several studies using image-based approaches and demonstrates that respondents to different settings formulated crowding norms. Needham et al. (2004) showed that backcountry visitors rated similar encounter levels as less acceptable as visitors in easy acces-sible tourist areas. In addition, when reported encounters exceeded visitors ’ encounter norms, perceived crowding was signiﬁ cantly higher in all settings.

Study goals

This paper summarizes and analyses European research dealing with crowding in forests. It ex-plores (1) which settings and user groups have been investigated; (2) which crowding measures have been applied and the factors inﬂ uencing crowding and (3) compares the European with the North American situation in regard to crowding research. The results serve as a basis for the dis-cussion of the necessity of dealing with crowding in European forests and should assist research-ers, managers and policy makers in investigating crowding in rural and urban forests.

Materials and methods

Two data collection approaches were used. Inves-tigations into forest recreation were carried out among 26 participating countries between 2005 and 2008 as part of the European Cost Action E33 ‘ Forest for Recreation and Nature Tour-ism ’ ( http://www.openspace.eca.ac.uk/coste33/ welcome.htm ). They focus on household, as well as on-site, surveys to provide a Europe-wide

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Not atall crowded slightly crowded moderately crowded extremely crowded

Figure 1. The nine-point Likert scale for measuring crowding ( Heberlein and Vaske, 1977 ).

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overview of forest recreation and research. The main topics investigated were the methods ap-plied for assessing recreation demand and supply and variables asked in the surveys.

The second approach was a literature review of English, German and French journals, proceed-ings, project reports and books, systematically investigating the databases of forest-related jour-nals and forest associations, for all reported work since 1980.

Results

The European situation

Based on the Europe-wide comparison of house-hold surveys on forest recreation, at least 40 per cent of the population in each country visits a forest for recreational purposes ( Dehez et al. , 2007 ). Common variables which are most often assessed are related to the number of visits, socio-demographics and to the recreation activities. In addition, group size and group composition are furthermore among the most frequently surveyed variables. However, perceived crowding has not been a topic in household surveys ( Dehez et al. , 2008 ).

Most European research and monitoring activ-ities carried out in forests include visitor density variables such as the number of visitors, visitor activities and the frequency of visits. Informa-tion about socio-psychological variables, such as motives, expectations and crowding percep-tions, is frequently missing. Although these items are considered as key variables to indicate why people visit – or do not visit – a forest and how they perceive recreation quality ( Arnberger and Grant, 2008 ). Instead, information on use levels is predominantly drawn on to determine ecologic or economic impact assessments (e.g. Elsasser, 2001 ; Zundel and Völksen, 2002 ; Ingold, 2005 ).

European crowding studies

It was only possible to identify 16 studies from eight countries dealing with crowding in a broader sense since the 1980s ( Table 1 ). These studies took place in Central and Northern Europe. It is clear that during this period, crowding has

in-creased in importance among the European for-est research community. While two studies were carried out in the early/mid-1980s and one study in the 1990s, 13 of them were reported during the past decade. Several forest types were stud-ied: urban, suburban and rural forests in about equal proportions. Most of them were organized as regional or local case studies, often carried out in protected areas such as national parks or bio-sphere reserves. Seasons investigated for on-site studies were mostly the summer or the period be-tween spring and autumn.

One comprehensive, nationwide, outdoor rec-reation study from Denmark, which included one crowding question, covered all forest types ( Jensen, 2006 ), but has, so far, not reported on the differences regarding crowding perceptions across forest settings. In this study, 592 recre-ation areas, including nearly all state forests and many private forest properties as well as some nature areas such as beaches, were surveyed be-tween 1996 and 1997. The methods used were year-round car counts by human observers and questionnaires at parking areas.

New methods of measuring the quality of visi-tor experience (quality of experience (QoE) sur-veys) began in England and Wales in 2003 and 2006, respectively, including several forest sites, now monitored each year (see the reports for 2005 – 2006; TNS, 2005 , 2006 ). However, the QoE survey focuses more on conﬂ icts than on crowding perceptions because of the application of the more general ‘ perceived enjoyment mea-sure ’ for several visitor groups encountered.

The recreational user groups surveyed in all identiﬁ ed European crowding studies were usu-ally all on-site users encountered, such as walkers, joggers, bicyclists, dog walkers, hikers. Two stud-ies focussed on canoeists ( Grossmann et al. , 2004 ; Sterl et al. , 2004 , 2006 ), while one study speciﬁ -cally investigated several activity groups such as hikers, mountain bikers and horse riders ( Mann, 2006 ). Several studies ( Bernath et al. , 2006 ; Arnberger et al. , 2007 ; TNS 2005 , 2006 ) focussed on crowding perceptions of local residents.

Crowding measures and question format

On-site interviews were used in most studies for collecting crowding data. Few relied on mail-back

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Table 1 : Crowding studies in European forests

Study authors Country Context

Protected

area Methods used

User groups investigated Season Trakolis and Harding (1981) UK Rural NP NNR On-site interview ‘ Visitors ’ encountered Summer Koch (1984) in Jensen and Skov-Petersen (2006)

Denmark Suburban – On-site

interview All users encountered Chambers and Price (1986) UK Rural – On-site interview Visitors encountered Summer

Saarinen (1998) Finland Rural NP On-site

interview

Backpacker Summer Fredman and

Hörnsten (2001)

Sweden Rural NP Mail-back

survey

Hiker June – September

Roovers et al. (2002)

Belgium Suburban – On-site

interview Walker, jogger, bicyclist, horse rider Between summer and spring Grossmann et al. (2004)

Germany Rural NP On-site

interview Canoeists/ paddler May – August Sterl et al. (2004 , 2006)

Austria Suburban NP On-site

interview Canoeist Summer TNS (2005 , 2006 ) UK Rural, (sub)urban – On-site interview; mail-back survey interview at home depending on study site All users encountered/ local residents depending on study site Interviews at home: summer or November/ December; on-site interviews between July and October Jensen (2006) Denmark Rural,

(sub)urban

– On-site interview All users encountered

1 year

Mann (2006) Germany Rural NatP Household Hiker, bicyclist,

mountain biker, horse rider, jogger/ walker, hang-glider Summer Bernath et al. (2006)

Switzerland Urban – On-site interview;

household survey Visitors/local residents May – October Arnberger and Brandenburg (2007)

Austria Suburban NP On-site interview All users encountered

Between spring and autumn Arnberger et al.

(2007)

Austria Urban BR/NP On-site interview; household survey All users encountered/ local residents Between spring and autumn Arnberger and Haider (2007b)

Austria Urban – On-site interview All users encountered

April – October Arnberger and

Haider (2007a , 2005 )

Austria Urban – On-site interview All users encountered

Late summer/ early fall BR, biosphere reserve; NP, national park; NatP, nature park; NNR, national nature reserve.

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questionnaires, household surveys of local resi-dents, interviewing people at home or a combina-tion of several data colleccombina-tion approaches ( Table 1 ). Different measures were employed to assess crowding perceptions as a dependent variable ( Table 2 ). In most studies, the measure referred to the situation actually encountered or the last for-est visit. Only a few studies used global measures of perceived crowding. These measures are based on the respondent ’ s aggregation of numerous in-dividual crowding situations over a larger spatial unit and/or time period subsumed to one overall evaluation. Some global measures differentiated between weekends and workdays ( Arnberger and Haider, 2007b ). A few studies used several measures, i.e. global and actual measures and/or image-based studies. In three Austrian studies, images were used to explore the hypothetical contribution of various social conditions such as the visitor numbers, direction of movement and group size to encounter preferences or intended displacement.

Two studies investigated attitudes towards meeting other visitors along the trails in a back-packer area and in an urban forest and one survey asked forest visitors if they had encountered dif-ferent visitor types during their most recent visits and how this had affected their enjoyment.

Univariate and bipolar measures of perceived crowding were applied in about equal propor-tions for urban, suburban and rural areas ( Table 2 ). While the bipolar measure captures infor-mation about the positive and negative effects of crowding, with a scale ranging from an un-dercrowded to an overcrowded situation, with a ‘ neutral ’ or ‘ pleasant ’ midpoint, the univariate measure focuses on overcrowding only (see Fig-ure 1 ). Among each of the measFig-ure categories, various response scales, differing in wording and in number of scale points, were used. Four stud-ies used the nine-point Likert scale as suggested by Heberlein and Vaske (1977) , but collected data in different ways or focussed on different user groups. Other studies employed univari-ate measures with four- or ﬁ ve-point response scales.

Bipolar measures used three-, ﬁ ve- or seven-point scales. These scales ranged from a ‘ too undercrowded ’ to an ‘ overcrowded ’ situation or from ‘ too much solitude ’ to ‘ excessively over-crowded ’ . Other scales ranged from ‘ deserted ’ to

‘ packed ’ , ‘ too few people ’ to ‘ too many people ’ or ‘ decreased enjoyment a lot ’ to ‘ increased en-joyment a lot ’ . Midpoints on the bipolar scales indicated a pleasant, comfortable, appropriate, acceptable, made no difference or an about right, social situation. When surveying encounter atti-tudes, the response scale ranged from a pleasant to an unpleasant situation. All these variations, in scale, wording and reporting, caused problems to compare the results of the identiﬁ ed studies for further analysis. The poles of the scales pointed in similar directions to describe the perceived recre-ational situation, but were too heterogeneous to compare the degree of perceived crowding. Few studies used several measures in combination, i.e. global and actual measures and/or image-based approaches. Most studies relied only on the ac-tual measure.

Number of crowded respondents and independent factors

Crowding perceptions were reported in all studies ( Table 2 ). The proportions of respondents who perceived crowding in these studies ranged from 10 to 64 per cent. A clear picture, differentiated by countries or settings, is not apparent .

Seven studies, using actual measures, i.e. respondents were asked to report perceived crowding based on the current social condition encountered or during their last trip encoun-tered, carried out visitor counts in parallel or asked respondents about the number of encoun-ters during their stay ( Table 2 ). Similar to the US research, these studies showed relationships between the subjectively reported number of encounters and objectively monitored use lev-els and perceived crowding. Investigations into the social – psychological factors inﬂ uencing crowding perceptions were presented in only a few studies. Authors predominantly correlated expectations, motives, satisfaction and past ex-periences with crowding and found signiﬁ cant relationships: crowding had a negative effect on visitors seeking solitude and silence and de-creased satisfaction of the quality of outdoor recreation. Especially, forest visitors who re-peatedly visited one forest area, and thus having some past experience, tended to be more sensi-tive towards crowding.

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Discussion and recommendations

This paper summarizes and analyses crowding re-search in European forests for the ﬁ rst time. The ﬁ ndings reveal that European studies on crowd-ing are rare and diverse, compared with the nu-merous and focussed research efforts in North

America, particularly in the US. At the same time, the increasing number of publications in the past decade indicates that more attention is being paid to this topic in Europe.

In most Southern, Eastern – and several Cen-tral – European countries, however, crowding is not recognized as an issue for forest recreation Table 2 : Crowding measures, response scales, independent variables and proportions of forest visitors who perceived crowding

Study authors Crowding measure Answer scales *

Independent variables

Proportions of crowded visitors

per study (%) Trakolis and Harding

(1981)

Actual Univariate nine-point

measure

Not reported 11 Koch (1984) in Jensen

and Skov-Petersen (2006)

Actual Bipolar three-point

measure

Not reported Not analysed

Chambers and Price (1986)

Actual Bipolar seven-point

measure

Yes Not clearly stated Saarinen (1998) Attitudes Bipolar ﬁ ve-point

pleasantness measure Yes Fredman and

Hörnsten (2001)

Actual Univariate nine-point

measure

Yes 24.5

Roovers et al. (2002) Actual Univariate ﬁ ve-point measure

Not reported 10 Grossmann et al.

(2004)

Actual Univariate four-point

measure Yes 55 Sterl et al. (2004 , 2006) Actual preferences (images) Bipolar ﬁ ve-point measure Yes 30

TNS (2005 , 2006) Actual (recent visit) Bipolar ﬁ ve-point enjoyment measure for several visitor groups encountered

Yes 0 – 85 with decreased enjoyment depending on study site Jensen (2006) Univariate Actual nine-point

measure

Not reported 17 Mann (2006) Global and actual

(last visit)

Univariate nine-point measures

Yes 19

Bernath et al. (2006) Global Univariate three-point measure

Not reported Locals: 30; on-site: 25 – 29

Arnberger and Brandenburg (2007)

Global Univariate four-point

measure

Yes 36

Arnberger et al. (2007)

Global (for two area sections)

Bipolar seven-point measures

Not reported For Sundays: 47/30 Arnberger and

Haider (2007b)

Global and actual Bipolar seven-point measures

Yes Actual: 17.5; global weekends: 64; workdays: 15 Arnberger and Haider

(2007a )

Use displacement (images)

Binary (yes/no) Yes –

* Univariate measure, scale ranging from no crowding perceptions to extremely crowding perceptions; bipolar measures, scale ranging from undercrowding to no crowding/pleasant to extremely crowding perceptions.

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research and management. Besides little po-litical willingness and ﬁ nancial constraints, the predominant open access to forest roads, paths and trails also on public land, as well as the lack of legal requirements are considered among the main obstacles to putting more emphasis on rec-reation crowding research ( Gentin et al. , 2008 ). The diverse landownership structure may play an additional role. In most European countries, landownership is a complex, often small-scaled patchwork of dominating private and some few public landowners ( Hirsch et al. , 2007 ). The 78 million ha of North American national forests, which are covering ~ 8.5 per cent of the total land area ( US Forest Service, 2008 ), are often protected forests and woodland areas which are larger in size compared with European public for-ests. They are managed by the Forest Service to also provide opportunities for recreation in open spaces and natural environments, including man-aging opportunities for solitude and wilderness experiences (see ‘ Wilderness Act ’ ). Therefore, the idea of social carrying capacity and with it standardized applicable recreation measurements like crowding were used to apply and enforce the respective legislations. Thus, providing forest rec-reational supply is clearly a service provided by the US State. In contrast, we assume that private landowners in the US are less obliged in provid-ing recreation services, e.g. open access for the public, and, as an effect, conducting less outdoor recreation research.

Implications

Higher levels of crowding perceptions were iden-tiﬁ ed, indicating that crowding should become a management and policy issue in European ests, in particular, because Central European for-ests should serve as spaces to counter the stress of urban life and provide relief from high popula-tion densities, contributing to the psychological well-being of the urban population. Although dif-ferent settings were included, there was no con-sistent trend for urban forests being perceived as more crowded than rural forests despite higher densities. However, because of the different methodological approaches and scales used, as well as the low number of studies, reliable inter-forest comparisons are difﬁ cult to make.

Aggre-gate and cross-cultural crowding analyses, which have occurred in the North American literature (e.g. Shelby et al. , 1989 ; Vaske et al. , 1996 ; Vaske and Donnelly, 2002 ), are not yet possible for Eu-ropean settings. The need for a standardization of crowding research seems necessary in order to provide a deeper understanding of crowding per-ceptions, to gain insights into cultural differences and commonalities and to increase knowledge among the diversity of forest types, not only on a European but also on a nationwide level. England and Wales, as well as Denmark, can act as role models because of their comparatively long expe-riences in setting up national recreation monitor-ing programmes. As an effect, they have collected crowding-related data such as the number and the frequency of visits in a systematic way for their nationwide studies ( Dehez et al. , 2008 ).

Besides methodological differences, most iden-tiﬁ ed European studies have used the same theo-retical foundation of the relationship between reported or objectively measured encounters and perceived crowding, based on the US recreation crowding literature, and incorporated crowding-related measures as univariate or bipolar scales in their research designs.

A factor missing from European research is to identify commonly shared acceptable encounter levels. Few European studies have attempted ver-bal or visual approaches to elicit crowding prefer-ences or intended displacement but have not gone further to measure crowding norms. The general access rights to forests and most of the protected areas and the lack of legal requirements like the Wilderness Act and management options for lim-iting visitor numbers may be signiﬁ cant barriers in doing so.

Similar to the US, a range of crowding studies have been undertaken in protected areas. Driven to control the impacts of recreation use upon wildlife, information on social aspects, includ-ing crowdinclud-ing, provides a sound evidence base for solving the conﬂ icts between nature conservation and tourism/recreation. Nature conservation is, therefore, the driving force in forest crowding re-search in these situations.

In contrast to the North American literature, with its focus on wilderness, backcountry and pro-tected areas and their speciﬁ c and rather homoge-neous user composition (e.g. backcountry hiking including camping activities), the European studies

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mainly surveyed urban or urban-proximate for-est users. Many of them are everyday users with high levels of past experience, who stayed mostly a few hours in the forest. Those forest users are engaged in diverse recreation activities such as walking, jogging, mountain biking, Nordic walk-ing, dog walkwalk-ing, picnickwalk-ing, horse riding. Only a few studies focused explicitly on one of these user groups or compared crowding ratings across several user groups. Consequently, knowledge about speciﬁ c user group and/or ethnical needs and their reported crowding is limited.

Additionally, only a small number of studies included independent variables that inﬂ uence crowding – except perhaps some use of density measures such as use levels or encounters. This is surprising, considering that especially the US literature has for a long time held a broader per-spective, and that data on visitor characteristics inform management about those who are sensi-tive to crowding and their reasons for reacting to it. Incorporating these kinds of questions would provide valuable information for forest manage-ment in dealing with recreation use.

Crowding measures

The diversity of crowding measures and response scales applied in European studies is confusing. The question about which of the measures and response scales should be used to obtain the best informa-tion about crowding must be raised. On the other hand, the diversity of measures and response scales provides a rich knowledge basis on how crowding can be recorded in diverse settings and contexts.

The single-item nine-point Likert scale has been used in a range of studies because it is easy to interpret and compare results across studies and countries. Bipolar measures can include more information, but might not be so sensitive regard-ing (over)crowdregard-ing perceptions when not usregard-ing the single-item nine-point Likert scale. The bipo-lar scale revealed that perceived underuse, due to safety concerns ( Luymes and Tamminga, 1995 ) or social understimulation ( Kaplan and Kaplan, 1982 ), is an additional urban forest phenomenon in several areas. Particularly for the urban context, undercrowding can deliver information about an ineffective recreation use of the, in many cases, few urban forests and about their potential to

ab-sorb more visitors from other overcrowded urban green spaces. Consequently, combining both measures would provide most valuable informa-tion to better understand the European situainforma-tion empirically and improve managerial decisions.

The same applies to the time period asked for in the studies, when and where crowding was per-ceived, either on-site or shortly after the visit (as actual measures) or as a global measurement refer-ring to a series of past experiences in one setting. As conﬁ rmed by the European studies, the actual measure of crowding follows the classical crowd-ing research approach and is typically concerned with use levels or encounter indicators ( Shelby et al. , 1989 ). In contrast, global measures of perceived crowding summarize the longer term attitudes and concerns of visitors towards the forest more ac-curately than one single, actual crowding measure ( Arnberger and Haider, 2007b ). This applies es-pecially for repeat users having some past experi-ence, who can be predominantly found in urban and urban-proximate forests. To study crowding, we propose to apply several crowding measures for on-site studies in the European context: using global as well as actual bipolar measures appears to be the most appropriate approach. A differen-tiation of the global measure between different weekdays or even seasons may provide additional valuable information. If univariate crowding mea-sures are utilized, they might use a standardized nine-point response scale. Ideally, the measure should be a bipolar response scale ranging from an undercrowded situation to an overcrowded one with a midpoint, which may indicate a pleas-ant social use condition. A 17-point bipolar scale would allow making ﬁ ndings comparable to these studies, which used the traditional nine-point re-sponse scale. Additional information about en-countered use densities and their perceptions by forest users would help to better recognize changes in the recreation system, its uses and users over time. Ideally, on-site crowding measures should be complemented by bipolar global crowding mea-sures for forests in (national) household surveys.

Recommendations for forest management and policy

The practical aim of crowding studies is to support decision makers in choosing and implementing

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strategies to reduce social conﬂ ict. By under-standing that perceived crowding is more likely to be based on visitor characteristics than solely on physical disturbances points towards impor-tant implications for recreation management and policy making. Thus, only considering reducing the number of visitors, or physical separation, may be an insufﬁ cient solution if the problem is socially and psychologically rooted ( Owens, 1985 ).

Forest management can infl uence several of these social – psychological factors to reduce crowding perceptions and increase recreation quality ( Budruk et al. , 2002 ; Vaske et al. , 2002 ; Hall and Cole, 2007 ). Knowing a setting is per-ceived as being less crowded can be regarded as a distinct feature, i.e. a low-density recreation ex-perience. Promoting recreation use in these areas should be considered carefully because an in-crease in use could change the experience ( Shelby et al. , 1989 ). In turn, if an area is considered to be crowded, managers may consider keeping it as such because high visitor numbers can be an ac-ceptable part of the recreation experience, espe-cially in tourist areas or urban forests. Crowding information can help urban green space manage-ment to identify areas with too low use levels and to defl ect recreation use from overcrowded green spaces. Accompanying area design and infra-structural modifi cations, as well as visitor man-agement strategies, can be implemented. Efforts can be introduced to redistribute visitor density, for instance, by encouraging visitors to use vary-ing routes or offervary-ing special activities or guided tours for temporal separation. Vegetation place-ment and the design of curved paths can also help to reduce encounters by minimizing visual contacts ( Arnberger and Haider, 2005 ). In addi-tion, information to adjust visitor expectations will reduce the probability of crowding percep-tions and enhance visitor experiences. Informa-tion on the probable number of contacts in an area, including information about peak visiting times and seasons, will enable visitors to plan according to their density preferences ( Budruk et al. , 2002 ).

Crowding may be of higher importance in the future due to the ongoing societal demands for outdoor recreation together with trends towards concentrating uses on fewer paths and areas be-cause of ecological impacts. Without establishing

adequate opportunities for crowding-sensitive forms of recreation, social conﬂ icts may occur more often. A recommendation for policy mak-ing is to foster periodic recreation use monitor-ing, including the establishment of standardized measures of visitor densities, as well as the social evaluative variable of perceived crowding.

The Pan-European Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management established by the Ministe-rial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe ( MCPFE, 2003 ) may serve as a politi-cal orientation. The Criterion 6 ‘ Maintenance of other socio-economic functions and conditions ’ and in particular the indicator 6.10 ‘ Accessibility for recreation ’ demand for information of recre-ational uses. Although it has so far not suggested measures of recreation quality, it could be used as a common framework to be concretized on the national level in a standardized descriptive and evaluative way for crowding measurement. Par-ticularly, urban and suburban forests not provid-ing the desired visitor experiences can provoke use displacement and may lead to lower partici-pation rates in outdoor recreation, which in turn can affect the health of city dwellers. Those who have no access to more remote and lower used areas may be speciﬁ cally concerned. An inclusion of quality indicators of outdoor recreation expe-rience in national forest laws would help to better recognize changes in the societal use of forest and would deliver valuable information for sustain-able forest management .

Funding

The paper draws on work being undertaken as part of the EU funded Cost Action: “ Cost E33: Forest Recrea-tion and Nature Tourism ” . This European CooperaRecrea-tion in the ﬁ eld of Scientiﬁ c and Technical Research allowed experts from around Europe to network and to pool research and practice.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Neil Grant, Frank Sondergaard Jensen, Pieter Roovers, Jeoffrey Dehez and Sandra Gentin for their inputs to this paper and the two anonymous reviewers.

Confl ict of Interest Statement None declared.

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Received 11 December 2007