Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 14 (2015) 89–98 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Urban Forestry & Urban Greening journa l h om epage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ufug Perceptions of recreational trail impacts on an urban forest walk: A controlled field experiment Andrej Verliˇ c a,c,∗ , Arne Arnberger b,1 , Anˇ ze Japelj c,2 , Primoˇ z Simonˇ ciˇ c c,2 , Janez Pirnat d,3 a Tisa, Cesta v prod 84, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 4 b University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Department of Landscape, Spatial and Infrastructure Sciences, Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning, Peter-Jordan-Straße 82, 1190 Vienna, Austria 5 c Slovenian Forestry Institute, Veˇ cna pot 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 6 d University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Department for Forestry and Renewable Forest Resources, Veˇ cna pot 83, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 7 a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Forestry Green infrastructure Recreational impact assessment Recreation ecology Trail impacts a b s t r a c t Urban forest managers regularly deal with recreational trail impacts and dissatisfied trail users. This exploratory study examined the extent to which various objectively measured recreational impacts on urban forest trails are perceived by trail users, and how perceptions affect the quality of their experience. The influence of age and education was also examined. An integrated approach combining biophysical and social science aspects was used with a convenience sample of university students and retirees (N = 82). A 1700 m long study trail through a natural forest within an urban landscape park was pre-assessed before the walk for visual impacts such as erosion, litter, exposed roots, vandalism, muddy trail sections, divergent and parallel trails, excessive trail width, domestic animal waste and sporting activity impacts. After the participants had walked the trail individ- ually, they completed a questionnaire which asked which trail impacts they had noticed, to what extent they had noticed them, and whether and to what degree that had influenced their recreation experience. The results indicated that some impacts such as muddy trail sections and informal trails were perceived to a much greater extent than assessors had objectively measured them. © 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. Introduction Urban recreational areas such as urban forests are under heavy use pressure (Arnberger, 2006; Smrekar et al., 2011). Urban forests, being a part of urban green spaces, are exposed to various recre- ational use impacts such as trail degradation, soil removal and littering (Manning, 2011). Trails are the most important recre- ational infrastructure in urban forests. Trail corridors provide a context that affords access where visitors seek restorative ∗ Corresponding author at: Slovenian Forestry Institute, Veˇ cna pot 2, 1000 Lju- bljana, Slovenia. Tel.: +386 40 512 195; fax: +386 1 257 3589. E-mail addresses: andrej.verlic@gozdis.si (A. Verliˇ c), arne.arnberger@boku.ac.at (A. Arnberger), anze.japelj@gozdis.si (A. Japelj), primoz.simoncic@gozdis.si (P. Simonˇ ciˇ c), janez.pirnat@bf.uni-lj.si (J. Pirnat). 1 Tel.: +43 1 47654 7205; fax: +43 1 47654 7209. 2 Tel.: +386 1 200 78 00; fax: +386 1 257 35 89. 3 Tel.: +386 1 3203 524; fax: +386 1 256 57 82. 4 http://www.tisa.si/. 5 http://www.rali.boku.ac.at/. 6 http://www.gozdis.si. 7 http://www.bf.uni-lj.si/. experiences (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989; Hartig et al., 1991) but also encounter recreational impacts (Moore et al., 2012). There- fore, well-managed trail networks include for example, appropriate routing and threading, sufficient maintenance and monitoring of visitors, which help sustain urban forest ecosystems and the qual- ity of recreational experiences (Lynn and Brown, 2003; Monz et al., 2010; Moore et al., 2012). How trail users perceive actual recreational impacts and how those impacts affect their visit- ing experience is hypothesized as a key information management needs. Previous research on the perception of recreational trail impacts has found that visitors notice those impacts in general (Chin et al., 2000; Lynn and Brown, 2003; Arnberger and Eder, 2011; Moore et al., 2012) and that their perceptions and preferences for vari- ous urban forest management strategies can be influenced by age, education, frequency of visits to the forest and where they live (Tyrväinen et al., 2003). However, few studies have investigated to what extent visitors perceive such impacts compared to their actual occurrence and to what extent specific impacts influence the perceived quality of the experience. Furthermore, little is known about the extent to which the perception of visitors depends on factors such as age or education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2014.12.004 1618-8667/© 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.