Understanding Millennials’ Motivations to Visit State Parks

Abstract

Many state parks have been identified as National Natural Landmarks as a result of their extraordinary representation of flora, fauna, and geological resources. While many state park’s scenic stretches of flowing rivers and large lakes are popular for canoeing, kayaking, and tubing, it’s influence on millennials is worth studying. This study aims to understand millennials’ motivations to visit state parks and the influence of pictures of the outdoor activities on social media. Push factors of motivation such as sightseeing, social interaction, and relaxation, and pull factors such as local activities, amenities, variety, and uniqueness were used to assess their preferences. Data was collected using an online survey on Qualtrics platform from undergraduate students at a state university in Pennsylvania. This study is unique as it focuses on millennials’ motivations to visit state parks, which is not heard in the literature.

Exploring the impact of functional, symbolic, and experiential image on approach behaviors among state-park tourists from India, Korea, and the USA

“…There are more than 4000 national/state parks in the world (Harford, 2021) attracting millions of visitors every year, contributing to the economy through jobs, revenue creation, (Fredman and Yuan, 2011), and providing communities with naturebased entertainment and outdoor recreation (Whiting et al, 2017). For example, the combined impact of the US state parks on the economy with more than 400 state parks, covering 84 million acres of land, 17,000 miles of trails, and 221,000 campsites, and employing more than 22,000 staff (NPS, n.d.;Singh and Kealey, 2019) and 221,000 volunteers to provide services to over 280 million visitors annually (Blanck et al, 2012) is billions of dollars. State park visitors' spending resulted in a $41.7 billion benefit to the nation's economy and supported 340,500 jobs (DOI, 2020).…”