Author : Yun Liang
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (142 download)
Book Synopsis Visition and Barriers of Racial Minority Groups to U.S. National Parks by : Yun Liang
Download or read book Visition and Barriers of Racial Minority Groups to U.S. National Parks written by Yun Liang and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this dissertation was to utilize mixed methods, including big data analytics and qualitative analysis, to understand visitation patterns and barriers of racial minority visitor groups to U.S. national parks. According to National Park Service (2020), U.S. national parks attract 327.5 million visits in 2019. However, despite an increase of 156% in U.S. national park visitation compared to the visitation of 50 years ago, most visitors of U.S. national parks are middle-class white; racial minority groups, such as African Americans, and low-income people are less likely to visit U.S. national parks, suggesting a lack of representation and diversity among U.S. national park visitors compared to the general American population. Traditional approaches to understand visitation patterns and visitor behaviors in U.S. national parks rely on count data and visitor survey. However, these approaches have several limitations, such as substantial time and financial costs, certain data collection periods and locations, etc. More recently, mobile device data, a new data source, has been adopted for monitoring visitors in tourism or park-related research. However, few studies validated mobile device data with traditional visitor surveys or count data. Chapter 2 combined mobile device data with the American Community Survey. It assessed mobile device data's validity in a national park context with three approaches: Points of Interest (POIs), visitor demographics, and temporal visitation patterns. The results revealed that only half of the POIs inside the national park are valid. Compared to traditional visitor surveys, mobile device data are limited due to platform bias and the exclusion of international visitors, resulting in discrepancies in visitor demographics, such as education level and income level. Conversely, mobile device data have strong correlations with count data regarding monthly and daily visitation patterns. The results suggest that with careful consideration, mobile device data can serve as an additional and complementary source of information to traditional survey data for understanding visitor demographics and temporal visitation patterns. Chapter 3 explored and compared visitor demographics, travel behaviors, and how diverse visitor groups change their travel behaviors to U.S. national parks before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in three U.S. national parks by mobile device data. The findings indicated that visitors reduced travel distance to Yellowstone National Park, however, visitors are more likely to visit national parks within driving distance of major metropolitan areas. Additionally, White visitors are less likely to be influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic to visit U.S. national parks, however, there were mixed results on travel behaviors of racial minority groups to visit the parks. Future research suggests that middle and small-size national parks can be beneficial by mobile device data to monitor visitor demographic compositions and behaviors. In additional to big data approaches, by utilizing a qualitative analysis, Chapter 4 investigated barriers of African Americans to visit U.S. national parks to understand the low visitation of African Americans in U.S. national parks and seek suggestions for NPS to better serve the African American community. Six categories, including historical factors, cultural factors, economic issues, spatial issues, knowledge issues, and racial discrimination, were identified as the barriers for African Americans to visit U.S. national parks. The study also provided related suggestions for NPS to better serve the group of people, such as building a long-term partnership with the community and offering discounts for the entrance fees or related programs of national parks.
