Willingness to engage in physically challenging activities as a visitor-segmentation criterion: the case of five protected areas in Catalonia

Abstract

Recreational and sports activities in protected natural settings have increased in recent decades. Despite the extensive literature addressing the segmentation of visitors in protected natural settings, to date, the willingness to engage in physically challenging activities has not been considered a potential segmentation criterion. Moreover, very few seg-mentation studies in the field provide additional empirical evidence about the extent to which the descriptors used influ-ence the assignment to a particular segment. Therefore, drawing on results from 1 597 questionnaires collected from visitors in five protected areas (Catalonia, Spain), the main intention of this applied research was to add to current knowledge and provide a multi-dimensional perspective on the role that socio-demographic, trip, motivational and attitudinal characteristics play on visitors’ willingness to engage in physically challenging activities. Our results revealed that in terms of the level of importance that they attributed to engaging in challenging physical activities, visitors in the areas studied are not a homogeneous group. Although the allocation of visitors to particular segments varied signifi-cantly according to the descriptors selected, logistic regression analysis revealed that motivational and trip behaviour descriptors had a stronger capacity to predict segment membership.