The Recreation Opportunity Spectrum in Practice: A Classification of Visitors and Sites in the Roaring Fork Valley, Colorado, USA

Researchers and public land managers continue to investigate what motivates visitors to recreate and how to best sustain environmental conditions to provide for these recreation demands and support conservation goals. Much recreation research has successfully identified visitor motivations at a single recreation area (spatial scale), but few studies broadly assess the manifestation of visitor motivations at an array of recreation areas that present unique recreation experience opportunities. Additionally, it is known that there are a diversity of visitor motivations and preferences, which presents a complex challenge to public land managers who must ensure that a diversity of recreation opportunities are available across a multitude of recreation areas. It is important to understand this variety in visitor motivations and preferences to support land managers’ efforts to develop and implement tailored strategies for managing outdoor recreation that provide for the desired visitor experience and ensure the recreation areas across larger spatial scales sufficiently provide diverse recreation opportunities. I intend to understand the comprehensive visitor experience and diversity of recreation opportunities provided for at recreation areas in the Roaring Fork Valley in western Colorado. In Chapter Two, I categorize the 14 recreation areas of interest along a five-level spectrum of experience opportunity classes and analyze visitor survey response data collected at these sites to identify key visitor motivations and gauge visitor response scores to a suite of questions about crowding perceptions and any subsequent coping behaviors. I further analyzed the relationship between these constructs and the recreation area groupings to understand how the visitor experience varied across the spectrum of sites. In Chapter Three, I utilize multi-variate data from rapid-field assessments to empirically group 52 recreation areas and develop comprehensive group profiles to understand the nuance of recreation opportunities provided in the Roaring Fork Valley. From these efforts, I conclude that visitors across the spectrum of recreation areas report a motivation to experience nature and tranquility, suggesting a shared desire for nature based experiences. Additional findings suggest that there is a diversity of recreation opportunities available that provide for the variety of visitor preferences in the Roaring Fork Valley.