European research tends to focus on land use in an ecocentric manner,
while the US body of literature is often more anthropocentric in scope. Nearly all European parks are recent
additions to the world’s loosely held collection of protected areas, and are often a means to minimize social use after hundreds or thousands of years of such use. Conversely, the approach to managing most US protected areas is to provide access for social use. Whereas social carrying capacity seems to be treated as a separate research topic
in the United States, recent European efforts focus on the combination of socioeconomic data with ecological data, although only a few studies (mostly from Alpine habitats) exist. Thus, more studies and a better emphasis on the integration of both research fields should be the focus of future research. Visitor satisfaction data and conclusions are also needed as key pillars of park management to convey the message about overused areas where the intentions for displacement lead to more potential conflicts, as the Austrian study shows. Especially in densely populated areas,
park managers have the difficult task of finding compromises between land user interests and natural resource
protection on a daily basis. In such cases, it is even more important to have sound knowledge about visitors’ intentions, because only this will provide for solid and transparent decision-making (Burns et al. 2010). It is assumed here that one of the reasons why the topics of crowding and social carrying capacity in general are pursued with a lesser emphasis
in Europe is that (besides the different legal situation) the actual occurrence of crowding would actually lead to consequences through management actions. These would include the limitation of visitor numbers or restrictions on certain recreational activities—in other words, measures that are not popular with visitors and users.
This is more complicated when—because of the overall dense situation in Central Europe—protected areas are urgently
needed for daily recreation.