Conservation, education, and adventure tourism: a case study of adventure parks as potential venues for communication in Monteverde, Costa Rica

ABSTRACT

Adventure tourism and nature-based tourism are increasing at the same time that negative effects from land development, forest fragmentation, and climate change continue to worsen. In Costa Rica, over half of the international visitors cite nature and adventure as the main reason for their visit. However, adventure-oriented facilities are underused for disseminating information about environmental conservation. With visitor surveys and manager interviews, we assessed demographics, visitor knowledge, interest and behaviors towards conservation and education of tropical forests in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Results suggested that visitors surveyed both before and after their visit to Selvatura Adventure Park agreed that they were interested in tropical forest conservation, and owners and managers of adventure parks in the region sought to improve their conservation and visitor education efforts. Adventure parks appear to be potential facilities that could supplement conservation education in the Monteverde region and may be increasingly important with continued land development pressures.

KEYWORDS:

• Adventure parks
• conservation
• education
• Costa Rica
• zipline

Acknowledgments

We thank Mario Andres Solano Badilla, Jose Dario Solano Badilla, and Maricella Soltis for providing access and logistical assistance at SAP. We thank managers and representatives at Extremo park, Sky Trek, and The Original Canopy Tour. Noelia Solano Guindon was essential for logistics, fieldwork, and translation. Thanks also to staff at SAP, especially the shuttle drivers for their support and safe driving. We received IRB exemption for this study from the University of Utah (IRB_00100698). Financial support was from the National Science Foundation (PI: Nadkarni IOS Award #1556319) and the University of Utah.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was from the National Science Foundation (PI: Nadkarni IOS Award #1556319) and the University of Utah.