The Research On Relationship Between Recreation Impact And Environmental Interpretation

With the continual development of economy in our society, with the continual increase of citizen's leisure time and the increasing awareness of protecting environment, outdoor recreation has become a popular style since the 60th of last century so that more and more people are swarming into city parks. However, owing to lack of forecasting and planning in early exploitive and basic construction, some problems have appeared in most city parks: In the high season, recreational facilities can't afford to be used by so many people as to arouse a series of problems. For instance, environment is polluted, resources are destroyed, and soil is hardened, water is well-fed and so on. How to balance economic development, environmental protection and resource utilization in recreation management have attracted more and more attention. Currently, how environmental interpretation can be effectively used to reduce the negative mi pacts of tourism and recreation is very challenging in tourism and recreational impacts management.This research has been focused on the interpretation of the environmental impact and its Effectiveness in recreation areas. It was to discuss whether visitors'perceptions of environmental impact were influenced by the interpretation activity of concerns. Some suggestions on the management of recreation impacts were provided for the reference of managers in managing recreation areas of Parks and tourism spots.Yuelu Mont. was selected as the study areas. The empirical analysis of the study data has also shown that the interpretation received by visitors would result in a significant difference in their perceptions of environmental impact as compared to those who did not receive interpretation. In addition, those who received interpretation would show a significant positive relation between impact perception and support of impact management. Both results have provided the evidence that interpretation of environmental impact is effective on visitors'attitudes. Therefore, this research suggests that managers keep carrying out the interpretation programs on environmental impact in order to reduce environmental impact through the change of visitors'attitudes and behaviors.A major finding of this research was that visitors of this site perceived five relatively serious impacts, including "the grass grounds were trampled', "the soil was trampled to become hard", "the roots of trees exposed", "vegetation damage along both sides of trails", and "tracks on lawn formed by visitors'shortcut behaviors". These impacts were somehow consistent with the results of observation on-site. It may indicate that managers should pay attention to rehabilitation of soil and vegetation. For example, a temporary close of certain impacted areas for the recovery of vegetation may promote recreation quality, accordingly.