Visitor Study at Wildernesspark Zürich

The perceived quality of a park visit plays a decisive role whether people want to visit the park again, feel related to the park, and whether they can enjoy it and relax during the visit. A positive visiting experience is a win-win situation for both the park and the visitor; First, it is more easy for the park to promote its aims and scopes if visitors are happy with their visit, and second, the recreational value of the park is higher for visitors who are satisfied with their stay.

In this concern, it is relevant to know which determinants contribute to a more positive or negative visiting experience, and thus to more or less perceived restoration. Many studies in this domain report persuasive evidence that psychological as well as environmental aspects can foster or hinder perceived restoration of a park visit. For instance, Hunziker, von Lindern, Bauer, and Frick (2012) could show in a Swiss population survey study that people benefit in terms of self-reported restoration from visiting forests and that the degree of restoration depends on environmental and psychological characteristics.

Therefore, both psychological and environmental factors and their association with self-reported restoration are subject to analysis within this project.

In particular, we want to assess the following research questions:

• Which motives and needs to visitors have and to which degree can they be satisfied by visiting the wilderness park?
  
• What is perceived as most positive and/or negative from a visitors' perspective during the stay at the wilderness park?
• How good can visitors orient themselves while in the wilderness park?
• Which routes and tracks are most popular? Where are places where visitors stop and pause? Do these places differ from other places (especially in their psychological perception)?
• How related do visitors feel to the wilderness park?
• Do visitors know about and participate in the courses and programs provided by the park?
• How stressed are people who visit the wilderness park, and to what degree do they feel restored after the visit? Whic environmental or psychological factors contribute to the degree of self-reported restoration?
  

Projectpartner

• Soziologisches Institut ETH (M. Näf)
• Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaft (ZHAW) (R. Rupf, R. Graf)

Project funding

Forschungskommission des Wildnispark Zürich

Contact WSL

• Eike Von Lindern