Turning National Parks into Tourist Attractions: Nature Orientation and Quest for Facilities

Abstract This paper presents an exploratory analysis of foreign tourists’ quests for facilities in Norwegian national parks, related to their expressed nature orientation. The analysis was based on a survey among German, Dutch and Danish tourists during the summer season of 2008. Exploratory factor analysis was applied to identify underlying dimensions from indicator questions related to nature orientations and to quest for facilities inside and outside the national parks. The indicator questions were primarily inspired by Nils Uddenberg’s classification of modern Swedes’ nature orientations. We found a significant, although fairly weak, relationship between nature orientation and quest for facilities, applying multivariate regression modelling. The strongest relationship was found for the quest for larger management measures – “Infrastructure & services” – supported by nature orientations labelled Challenge or Sightseeing, while these were disapproved of by the traditional outdoor Recreation orientation....