Tourists’ Attitudes towards Visitor Management and Restrictions in the National Parks in the Carpathian Mountains

Abstract

The purpose of the survey was to determine visitors’ knowledge of the regulations, their attitudes towards them as well as the declared degree of compliance. The article offers a comparative analysis of visitor management regulations in four national parks in the Carpathian Mountains (Tatra, Pieniny, Babia Góra, Bieszczady) and reports results of a survey involving 403 tourists who visited the parks in July and August 2021. Restrictions on tourist traffic in the four national parks vary significantly. Tourists’ attitudes towards these restrictions were found to be generally positive, and most respondents said they followed all or most of them. However, these results are inconsistent with the reported knowledge of the restrictions: a considerable percentage of the respondents were not familiar with them.