Risk perception and preparedness of backcountry visitors in Australia’s Snowy Mountains

ABSTRACT

Effective management of National Parks requires an understanding of visitors to provide safe and enjoyable visitor experiences. Risk and preparedness of snow-based recreation is not well understood outside of the context of avalanches. This study investigated the risk perception and preparedness of snow-based backcountry visitors in the Snowy Mountains of Australia through the theoretical lens of recreation specialisation. The recreation specialisation index was an appropriate tool for segmenting snow-based backcountry visitors into intermediates and experts along behavioural, cognitive and affective dimensions. We identified an overall low perception of risk and discuss the reasons and implications of this. In contrast, level of preparedness was of a high standard among both intermediate and expert snow-based backcountry visitors. This pertained to pre-trip planning and the carrying/use of safety equipment and trip notification behaviour. The findings provide insights for land managers to enhance visitor safety and risk management for snow-based backcountry visitors.

KEYWORDS:

• Recreation specialisation
• segmentation
• Kosciuszko National Park
• risk management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jen Smart

Jen Smart is interested in recreational tourism, social practices, human behaviour and the interface with managing public spaces, particularly protected areas. She is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Geography and Sustainable Communities at the University of Wollongong where she is researching recreational users’ relationship with biosecurity practice.

Pascal Scherrer

Pascal Scherrer is a Senior Lecturer at Southern Cross University, New South Wales, Australia. With a background in environmental science and ecotourism, Pascal’s main research interest is in regional development, sustainable tourism and visitor management in natural and cultural landscapes, addressing the areas of environmental, social and cultural impacts and their relationship.

Isabelle D. Wolf

Isabelle Wolf is an urban green space and protected areas specialist and researches various aspects of socio-ecological systems using geospatial methods for people monitoring, sustainable visitor experience development and natural resource management. Trained as an ecologist, her speciality are the human dimensions of ecosystems, with work on people and animal behaviour and flora and fauna communities among others in tourism and recreations systems.