4. Data analysis and results
4.1. Demographics and bear viewing statistics
Table 1 summarizes various demographic statistics for the survey
respondents. The number of respondents who provided responses
for each statistic is listed in parentheses next to its title.
Regarding education, it is somewhat surprising that 95% of survey
respondents had at least some college education. However, this is
consistent with findings from similar visitor surveys. For instance, a
2002e2003 survey conducted in the winter season found that
88.5% of Yellowstone National Park visitors and 98% of visitors
surveyed at Grand Teton National Park’s Taggart Lake had at least
some college education (Mansfield et al., 2005).
Of the 663 survey respondents, 81% participated in wildlife
viewing on their most recent trip to Yellowstone and 55% participated
in bear viewing specifically. When asked to list the top five
animals they would most like to see on their trip, 81% of respondents
listed bears as one of them. Duffield et al. (2006)
compare the results of Yellowstone National Park visitor surveys
conducted in 1991, 1999, and 2005 for the top three species visitors
surveyed in the summer indicated they would most like to see on
their trips to the Park. The authors note the surprising consistency
in ranking over the years; charismatic megafauna, such as large
carnivores and ungulates, steadily ranked the highest.Wolves were
the notable exception, ranking in the top three for 15% of the 1991
survey respondents, even though wolves were not present in the
Park at that time, and climbing to 36% of the 1999 summer survey
respondents, and 44% of the 2005 summer survey respondents.
This trend has notably continued; results from our 2009 survey
show that wolves rank second highest in terms of the percentage of
respondents who list them as one of the top five mammals they
would most like to see, followed by moose at 66%. Table 2 shows
the percentage of survey respondents choosing each of twenty-one
mammals and birds they were presented with as one of the top five
they would most like to see on their trip to Yellowstone National
Park.
When presented with the option to see a black or grizzly bear,
35% of all respondents indicated that they would prefer to see a
grizzly bear, 5% would prefer to see a black bear, and 60% had no
preference between the two. Nearly all respondents, 99%, indicated
that they had expected to see a bear on their visit to Yellowstone
National Park, and 67% actually did see a bear on their most recent
visit. Although the Park does not track the percentage of total