While most US national parks were created in the early part of the 20th century, most European protected areas were designated much more recently. For this reason, it is logical to benchmark the Brazilian protected areas with similar European protected areas. European social
science research on visitor management in nature-based recreational settings has traditionally
focused on understanding the impacts of use levels on the natural resource. Therefore, the
European approach has relied heavily upon visitor monitoring, and several countries have
established standardized visitor monitoring programs (Arnberger 2006; Burns et al. 2010).
This approach successfully provides indicators to natural resource managers. Nevertheless,
valid long-term data about overall visitation are not available for many locations. While data
on additional variables that are useful for developing social carrying capacity models (e.g.,
trip characteristics, sociodemographic variables, and recreation activities) have been regularly collected, variables reflecting the quality of the recreation experience, such as crowding
perceptions, have rarely been measured. Germany’s national parks serve as a prime example
here. Due to the 14 parks’ recent history, research and management activities focus mainly
on natural resources, whereas socioeconomic issues (e.g., tourism, recreation, and conflicts
between different user groups) are considered to a much lesser extent (von Ruschkowski
2010). A similar situation is reported for Austria (Arnberger and Muhar 2008). However,
during the past decade, interest in these variables has increased and recent efforts to provide
valid and long-term data on overall visitation, visitor preferences and satisfaction, and even
crowding perceptions are reported for sev
eral German, Swiss, and Austrian protected areas
(Arnberger 2006). Several areas have applied integrated visitor monitoring concepts combining monitoring data with survey data. However, in many cases research on crowding is driven by interested researchers and not by park administrations, as they have not yet identified
it as a prior management goal.