Information search, use of offers and national park affinity of recreation seekers in the Gesäuse National Park

This master thesis examined which sources visitors of the Gesäuse National Park use to search for information, which visitor offers are used, how many guests the National Park Gesäuse App (published in September) is already known and how their attitude towards the national park and individual visitor offers is. As a data basis, a survey was conducted in winter 2014 (n=293). As part of the evaluation, chi-square tests and non-parametric tests were used to identify correlations between the aforementioned aspects and the national park affinity, as well as socio-demographic and visit-related characteristics of the respondents. The Internet, hiking and climbing guides as well as the national park homepage were the most frequently mentioned sources of information. Among the visitor offers were information boards and the visitor centres “Weidendom” and “National Park Pavillon Gstatterboden”. 80 % of respondents have already heard of at least one visitor offer, but less than 50 % of them have already used an offer. The National Park Gesäuse app was known by very few respondents in winter 2014, at the time of the survey. The proportion of national park-affine respondents was 21 %. This played a minor role in connection with the use of certain information sources and visitor offers. Socio-demographic and visit-related characteristics of the respondents often showed connections with the use of certain sources and offers as well as the attitude towards the national park, which could be interesting for the development of future concepts of information and visitor offers. Some connections are consistent with the results of studies in other European national parks, some connections contradict or provide new aspects.