Interest group standards for recreation and tourism impacts at ski areas in the summer

Many contemporary recreation and tourism management frameworks including the Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) require multi-stakeholder input for measuring and monitoring indicators and standards of quality. Most studies, however, have used visitor norms to formulate standards for indicators, whereas the norms of other stakeholders have received less empirical attention. This paper examines the acceptability norms of several groups regarding indicators of summer use at the Whistler Mountain ski area in British Columbia, Canada. Data were obtained from surveys conducted with 432 visitors and 21 representatives of 12 companies, government agencies, and recreation and environmental interest groups. Respondents evaluated photographs of impacts for the density of hikers/sightseers and amount of bare ground at a campsite indicators. Responses were plotted on social norm curves. Results showed that standards for each indicator differed among the groups. The importance of each indicator (i.e., norm intensity) was high among the groups, but was highest for the density of hikers/sightseers, suggesting that it may be a more important indicator for this tourism-oriented setting. Management implications and future research topics are discussed. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.