Abstract
We investigated the trends and characteristics of individuals visiting four wetlands in South Korea. A total of 21,647,242 people visited the four wetlands from 2007 to 2012. The number of visitors increased significantly after the tenth Conference of Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands held in South Korea in 2008. Visitor data showed statistical evidence of seasonality in visits, with visitor numbers peaking in autumn of each year in all wetlands, probably because of the seasonality of natural resource availability in wetlands. Our findings are based on a self-administrated questionnaire survey completed by 600 respondents (150 from each wetland). Most respondents visited wetlands for sightseeing (50.94 %) or educational purposes (36.42 %) and remained for less than 2 h. Visits were primarily spent participating in educational and sightseeing programs. Thus, wetland visitor centers have an important role in wetland ecotourism and education. Guided educational and sightseeing programs for visitors, including independent, group, and family tourists, are helpful for effectively raising awareness of wetlands and distributing ecotourism concepts. Our study demonstrates that visiting wetlands is becoming an increasingly popular form of ecotourism in South Korea, supporting the importance of preserving this fragile ecosystem service.
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Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2013R1A6A3A03061589) and 2015 Post-Doc. Development Program of Pusan National University.
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The authors hereby state, the preceding manuscript has not been and is not in consideration for publication in any other journal. The manuscript has been submitted to the journal Wetlands Ecology and Management. This manuscript has not been published in any other journal, nor is it in consideration for publication in any other journal, as in accordance with the journal ethical guidelines. Funding for the research was from a university student’s research grant and does not violate any of the journals conflict of interest statements. Survey participants were provided guidelines for the purpose of the survey and all had to agree to participate in the survey before the survey was undertaken. Those who did provide informed consent for participation in the survey were guaranteed that no personal data from the survey data would be included in the results or the manuscript itself. This is in accordance with Pusan National University guidelines for human based research protocols. All personal data was therefore removed from the analysis, individual responses were coded before analysis, and this prevented the incorporation of human data in the manuscript, which is in accordance with Pusan National University Human Research Guidelines. This manuscript adheres to the appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability. All authors have read, and confirm that they meet, ICMJE criteria for authorship. All contributing authors are aware of and agree to the submission of this manuscript.
Funding
This work was financially supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2013R1A6A3A03061589) and 2015 Post-Doc. Development Program of Pusan National University.
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Yuno Do and Seong-Bo Kim have contributed equally to this manuscript.
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Appendix: Questionnaire
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Do, Y., Kim, SB., Kim, J.Y. et al. Wetland-based tourism in South Korea: who, when, and why. Wetlands Ecol Manage 23, 779–787 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-015-9418-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-015-9418-2