Linking the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum with Travel Spending: A Spatial Analysis in West Virginia

ABSTRACT

This article presents results from a mapping and analysis of the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS) for West Virginia using the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and GeoDa. Results show visitors' travel spending is significantly related to the urban class of the ROS spectrum, although this class only accounts for 3.3% of all ROS classes. It seems that the role of the urban class in generating travel spending had become less important in 2012 compared to 2010. These findings suggest a balanced development strategy be adopted, and more efforts should be put on the conservation of rural landscapes for the promotion of authentic rural tourism in the state. Rural tourism, we argue, will be more sustainable in the long run than the gambling industry, which has been declining in recent years because of increasing competition from surrounding states.

KEYWORDS:

• GIS
• ROS
• spatial analysis
• travel spending
• West Virginia

Funding

This study was funded to the second author by the USDA McIntire-Stennis Program (Grant numbers 0206012 and 0230037).

Notes

1 The Appalachian Regional Commission (2016) classifies the region's counties into one of five economic levels: distressed, at-risk, transitional, competitive, and attainment. This classification approach involves three economic indicators: three-year average unemployment rate, per capita market income, and poverty rate, which are compared with national averages by converting them to percent values. The resulting percent values are summed and averaged to create a composite index value for each county, which is then ranked, based on its composite index value, with higher values indicating higher levels of distress. The worst 10% of U.S. counties are classified as distressed counties, worst 11–25% as at-risk counties, best 11–25% as competitive counties, best 10% as attainment counties, and the remaining 50% as transitional counties. This five-level classification approach was adopted in our study to classify all counties in West Virginia into one of five naturalness levels: “Least Wild & Wonderful,” “Somewhat Wild & Wonderful,” “Moderately Wild & Wonderful,” “Highly Wild & Wonderful,” and “Most Wild & Wonderful.”