Trade-offs between wind energy, recreational, and bark-beetle impacts on visual preferences of national park visitors

Recreation pressure on natural resource settings, as well as the demand for new wind-energy production sites, is growing. In addition, extensive outbreaks of tree-killing insects are globally increasing. Protected-area managers are facing conflicts on proper land uses in and around their areas, and need information on visitor preferences for developing a land use policy for their area, accepted by the public. So far, little research has examined national park visitors’ responses to windmills and recreational infrastructures, visual changes in forest recreation settings resulting from forest insect infestations, high use pressures, and how visitors weigh trade-offs between these technical, biophysical, and socio-environment factors. This study explored national park visitor preferences with a discrete choice experiment that photographically simulated spruce forest stands with varying levels of recreational and technical infrastructures including the presence of windmills, bark beetle outbreaks, forest management practices, and visitor use levels. On-site surveys were conducted with visitors to the Bavarian Forest National Park in Germany (N = 514). Results revealed that the condition of the forest surrounding, followed by the presence of windmills, was the most important variable influencing visitors’ landscape preferences. Visitors preferred healthy mature forest stands and disliked forests with substantial dead wood, many windmills close to the viewpoint and high visitor numbers. Findings suggest that forest conditions and technical infrastructure are important concerns in addressing landscape preferences for forested protected areas and that trade-offs among these variables exist.