Beyond Fuzzy Feelings- Furthering Recreational Ecosystem Services

Open Access
- Author:
- Rice, William Luttrell
- Graduate Program:
- Recreation, Park and Tourism Management
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- November 07, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Brendan Derrick Taff, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Peter Newman, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Katherine Yoder Zipp, Committee Member - Keywords:
- ecosystem services
recreation
parks
protected areas - Abstract:
- The act establishing the world’s first federal protected area, Yellowstone National Park, imparts that the area be “set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people”. The challenge of managing protected areas to purvey benefits through visitor experiences has since been a major subject of research within the fields of recreation and leisure. Driver and others have advocated for the Benefits Approach to Leisure (BAL) on the grounds that it can serve as an efficient means of maximizing the benefits visitors receive from protected areas. However BAL largely ignores the tradeoffs managers must make with concern to ecological and visitor wellbeing. In an emerging body of literature, use-values inherent with recreation are often referred to as recreational ecosystem services (RES). In this frame, recreational outcomes in protected areas are analyzed in the context of the ecological process through which they are provisioned. These services are those nonmaterial outcomes humans obtain from the natural world such as spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences. Though a union between the management concepts of RES and the BAL has the potential to bridge gaps in both theories, no study has explored a means of linking these theories or their methods. This thesis focuses on both research concerning benefits achieved and services provided, and puts forth a means of coalescing them in future research, through the introduction of the Recreational Ecosystem Services Framework (RESF). This is achieved through an exploration of the foundations of both concepts and a case study in which the RESF is applied.