NEW RESEARCH – How can parks improve the potential to connect people to nature?
“Many park agencies are focusing a great deal of attention on attracting more visitors to parks and offering a broader range of visitor opportunities in parks as ways of building support for parks and protected areas in the future. However, there is very little empirical evidence to guide park managers and policy makers on what kinds of activities/experiences will best connect people to nature in a way that will increase support for pro-environmental behaviour and conservation initiatives over time.”
The report Building a Culture of Conservation State-of-Knowledge Report on Connecting People to Nature in Parks was presented at the IUCN World Parks Congress. This a state-of-knowledge report to respond to this information gap by reviewing what we know about the linkage between visitor experiences in parks and public support for conservation; by identifying research gaps in the area; and by outlining a research agenda to begin to address these gaps, in order to build more robust evidence to guide park management. The literature relates to park visitation and nature connectedness within a North American, and specifically Canadian, context with a focus on natural parks and protected areas.
