Landscape and Urban Planning 164 (2017) 25–36 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Landscape and Urban Planning journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan Research Paper Integrating off-site visitor education into landscape conservation and management: An examination of timing of educational messaging and compliance with low-impact hiking recommendations Tian Guo c,∗ , Jordan W. Smith b , Roger L. Moore a , Courtney L. Schultz a a Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 8004, Raleigh, NC 27695 USA b Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism and the Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, 5215 Old Main Hill, BNR 289, Logan, UT 84322, USA c School of Forest Resources, University of Maine, 5755 Nutting Hall, Orono, ME, 04473, USA h i g h l i g h t s • The treatment improved participants’ intent to stay on the trail. • The treatment improved participants’ knowledge levels. • The treatment promoted positive attitudes toward staying on the trail. • A short time difference did not change the effects of the educational message. • Results supported the use of off-site visitor education programs. a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 8 December 2016 Received in revised form 24 March 2017 Accepted 27 March 2017 Keywords: Timing Educational message Pro-environmental recreation behaviors Parks and protected areas Leave No Trace a b s t r a c t The protection of landscapes from environmentally-damaging recreational impacts requires planning and design for proactive visitor education. We examined how the timing of off-site educational messaging influences individuals’ compliance with, knowledge of, and attitudes towards two low-impact recreation behavioral recommendations (i.e., hiking on muddy or wet trail sections and walking on trail steps rather than around them) using a laboratory-based experiment. The educational message used in the experi- ment consisted of a video and short summary statements about low-impact hiking recommendations. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups: 1) viewing the message at least 24 h before the experiment; 2) viewing the message immediately before the experiment; or 3) not viewing the message at all (control). We assessed participants’ hiking intentions by asking them to draw their intended hiking routes on a large LCD display depicting short sections of the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina and Tennessee. Participants’ intended routes were coded as either complying or not complying with the low-impact hiking recommendations. For participants who received the educational message, knowledge about and attitudes toward low-impact hiking were measured twice, immediately after viewing the message and at the end of the experiment. Our analyses revealed the educational message significantly improved participants’ knowledge levels, attitudes, and intentions to comply with low-impact hiking recommendations. The timing of when the educational message was viewed/read by participants, however, did not influence their knowledge levels, attitudes, or intentions to comply. These findings suggest low-impact recreation behavior can be influenced through educational messages delivered before outdoor recreationists begin their trips. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: tian.guo@maine.edu (T. Guo), Jordan.smith@usu.edu (J.W. Smith), roger moore@ncsu.edu (R.L. Moore), clschul2@ncsu.edu (C.L. Schultz). 1. Introduction Nature-based recreation activities are part of the anthropogenic forces that constantly alter natural landscapes. The environmental impacts of recreation on soil, vegetation, water, wildlife, and other elements of ecosystems may seem trivial at the individual level, but when these impacts are multiplied by the volume of visitation to http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2017.03.013 0169-2046/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.