NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Visual Preferences of Travelers Along the Blue Ridge Parkway

Man's use of the natural environment frequently results in conflicting demands regarding the value of certain resources. Unlike Lester Ward's "telic" view of mankind, which described life as a struggle to gain control over natural resources (Dynamic Sociology 1883), much of man's effort today is directed at resolving conflicts between competing claims over how to use the natural environment. Solutions for resolving or reducing these competing demands usually involve some compromise. Aesthetic beauty—or the enjoyment of viewing scenic vistas of the natural landscape—reflects only one of the many competing uses society demands of its natural environment.

The Blue Ridge Parkway offers transportation, recreation, and culture to travelers who tour its 470-mile corridor through the crest of the southern Appalachians. However, the main feature of the parkway is the appeal of its scenic beauty. The parkway's travel brochures describe "past vistas of quiet natural beauty and rural landscapes lightly shaped by the activities of man. You travel the Southern Highlands, a land of forested mountains, exquisite during the flowering spring, cool in the green summer, colorful in the red autumn." How does man "lightly shape" nature to provide visual scenes that offer an enjoyable sightseeing experience? The research described in this book seeks to answer this question by focusing on the tourist as sightseer.

Our approach for this research was to unite different scientific disciplines through a single set of surveys to determine the travelers' preferences for scenic overlooks and scenes along the Blue Ridge Parkway. A cooperative effort was mounted to cut across disciplinary lines to obtain the visual preferences of travelers through the perspectives of the psychologist, sociologist, forest recreationist and landscape architect. All of these disciplines share an interest in trying to understand and predict what influences a traveler's sightseeing preferences, but no such common research effort had been attempted until this project.

No discipline by itself has all the answers, but this collective multidisciplinary effort provides a mosaic of the travelers' visual responses to the parkway. Scientists from each of the different disciplines decided what data was needed from the travelers, and together they acted in designing, planning, sampling, and obtaining that information from parkway travelers. Through this cooperation, much multidisciplinary information can be applied toward better maintenance practices, land use covenants, and plans for future parkway programs to increase the public's enjoyment of the Appalachian region.

The general reader should be forewarned regarding the language and technical terms used in this book. A working knowledge of statistics is assumed, and some language used by the researchers includes specialized technical terms that also require the reader to have some working knowledge of the disciplines. While we have attempted to mitigate these problems, we cannot totally eliminate them because of the advanced level of research that is being reported. Consequently, this book is written for the educated public, including advanced college students, academic and agency professionals, upper level management, and educated park tourists. These readers are likely to be the opinion leaders who will stimulate change in managing our park vistas.

The first chapter provides an overview explaining the kinds of information sought to aid resource managers in maintaining the vistas and vegetation along the parkway, and why. Chapter 2 reports how the parkway traveler ranks his preferences for certain parkway scenes. Chapter 3 further describes how parkway travelers rank these scenes, according to their socio-economic backgrounds. Chapter 4 attempts to explain the travelers' scenic preferences by evaluating their attitudes toward recreation and the environment. Chapter 5 shifts the emphasis toward the human visual nervous system and how it responds to scenes along the parkway, especially background and damaged vegetation. Chapter 6 tests the influence of communicative messages on an individual's scenic preferences. Chapters 7 and 8 are prepared by landscape architects who simulated parts of scenes along the parkway to measure how changes in vegetative management may affect preferences. The final chapter summarizes the researchers' basic findings and recommends management options toward ensuring continued visual enjoyment of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The individual contributors wish to acknowledge with gratitude the review comments of the National Park Service Natural Resources Publications Review Board. In particular, we are grateful for the editorial contributions of Jim Wood, Science Publications Editor, National Park Service Scientific Monograph Series. Superintendent Gary Everhardt and his staff at the Blue Ridge Parkway have greatly facilitated and supported this multidisciplinary research effort.

July 1987

Francis P. Noe
Atlanta, Georgia