Rain, cost or publicity - what determines variation in visitor numbers of the Swiss National Park?
Pia Anderwald, Swiss National Park, Zernez (CH)
Visitor numbers are often used as a measure for the economic success of protected areas, but are influenced by a variety of parameters such as season, weather, social/institutional factors, publicity and the cost of visiting the wider region. The Swiss National Park celebrated its centenary in 2014 with correspondingly high media coverage, enabling the application of a before-during-after design in modeling visitor counts over eight years. Our results suggest that the economic situation was the most important predictor of visitation rates after accounting for month and temperature.