Investigation of Visitor's Impact Management Approaches in Recreational and Protected Areas

Visitor's management approaches are necessary for proper utilization of recreational areas. Early researches for visitor's management in recreational areas led to the introduction of carrying capacity concept. However, failing to achieve the carrying capacity goals directed researchers to development of other management approaches, including Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC), Visitors Experience and Resource Conservation (VERP) and Visitor Impact Management (VIM). Application of these approaches for recreational areas has been described in the present study. These aproaches provide systematic, complex and sophisticated bases for management of natural resources and social conditions in the outdoor recreational and tourism areas. In these aproaches, the typical carrying capacity question of ‘‘how much use or impact is too much’’ is redefined as ‘‘how much use or impact is acceptable or should be allowed?’’. Investigation of these approaches showed that there is no difference between VERP, LAC and VIM in terms of the concept they use. The three approaches to manage recreational resources in a siutable manner. In addition, all address questions of carrying capacity, appropriate visitor use, and biophysical impacts caused by recreation use. While each framework calls for its own steps and general procedures, they address both environmental and social conditions and also formulate management directions for future. Therefore, managers of recreational areas can use these approaches towards sustainability of these places.