Evaluating Visitor And Manager Preferences for the Shenandoah National Park Visitor Mobile App

Description

This announcement is to provide public notice of the National Park Service’s intention to award a task agreement under a previously competed or single source justified master cooperative agreement. Specifically, KSU will: 1. Conform to the processes and principles outlined in the Interagency Visitor Use Management Framework (VUMF). The APP evaluation would target approximately three weeks (two week for quantitative data and one week for qualitative data) of known high use in the park during one season (typically summer). Selected locations would be based on highest visitation rates, in order to capture the most amount of use in the shortest period. The targeted approach would provide a snapshot of visitor responses. 2. Secure Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval and obtain a research permit from the park. 3. Conduct a pre-study workshop to bring together key decision makers to gain an in-depth understanding of the project’s purposes and needs; align outcomes to site and agency policies and plans; and obtain first-hand assessments of current conditions, facilities, and visitor and resource attributes. This workshop will also provide the PIs with an opportunity to interact with the APP on site with SHEN managers. 4. Distribute surveys to visitors to evaluate general mobile technology and social media preferences, usage levels, use during visitation, preferred access levels during visitation, and desired levels of interpretation from technology sources. 5. Conduct a parallel online survey linked to the APP for actual APP users to include, but is not limited to, evaluation of current elements, preferences for desired use, interpretive roles, and actual and preferred usage during visitation. It may also include conducting in-depth interviews and simulated APP usage to provide a more nuanced understanding of visitor preferences and triangulate data with managerial responses and quantitative visitor data. 6. Collect social baseline data to include, but is not limited to, visitor demographics; self-report use levels of APP and SHEN social media; network usage levels; content analysis of APP and SHEN social media; visitor perceptions of APP and SHEN social media; visitor perceptions of management actions, and facilities (infrastructure and interpretive); normative thresholds for crowding (as a function of network availability and physical capacity at recognized APP and SHEN social media hotspots); and trip motivations. Qualitative interviews will be conducted with visitors and managers to gain a deeper understanding of experiential and resource attributes. Data will be used to inform surveys related to provision of APP and SHEN social media and how it impacts the visitor experience at SHEN. 7. Provide to the park a peer-reviewed technical report (to include detailed summary, methods, results, analyses, and recommendations); empirically supported recommendations for APP and SHEN social media development; APP and SHEN social media evaluation protocol; peer-reviewed journal articles and presentations at professional conferences (to include 2019 George Wright Conference).

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