The purpose of this research was to provide an understanding of past efforts to predict recreation choice behavior. Additionally, from this past research in recreation and in the fields of psychology and consumer behavior, a lexicographic semi-order model was selected and tested for applicability in approximating recreation site choices. Testinq this model required initial work in deciding upon physical, social, and managerial attributes of a recreation site which may be relevant to a choice decision. A framework was developed to analyze the multitude of studies dealing with recreation site attributes. Using a microcomputer based data collection instrument in a laboratory situation, the lexicographic semi-order choice model was found to be successful in predicting the elimination of alternatives from a choice set. There was a negative relationship between the level of experience an individual had in backcountry use in the Southern Appalachians and the specificity with which they perceived attributes of the resource. The lexicographic semi-order choice model appears to be a feasible format for developing microcomputer-based decision aids for backcountry recreation site selection. / Ph. D.

South Africa's well-established history of formally protected areas has resulted in it becoming a global leader in resource conservation and a pioneer of new management techniques. Roughly thirty years ago, South Africa became one of the earliest countries in the world to legislatively recognise wilderness. Since the first wilderness areas were designated, use and management issues have become increasingly complex as managers strive to balance the biological and social values of wilderness areas. Consequently, it is imperative that management techniques and strategies evolve to preserve wilderness values and resources in South Africa. Wilderness visitor education and information programs are a critical part of an effective wilderness management strategy. To ensure that wilderness education and information systems are inclusive and able to evolve over time three elements are needed. A management framework must be in place to ensure that a system-wide approach is established and maintained. Once a system-wide framework is established, wilderness education and information systems can be inventoried and monitored against established management goals. This information can then be used to continually refine and improve wilderness information and education systems as they evolve through increased understanding of use and management Issues. Lastly, increased wilderness-specific research and continued testing of current research in the South African context is needed, to ensure that management strategies stay relevant and adaptive. These adaptive management strategies will serve as the foundation for wider coordination of wilderness management and research at the provincial and national levels, further developing South Africa's leadership role in protected area management in Africa and the global community. / Thesis (M.Env.Dev.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

Wilderness landscape, a setting common in Romantic literature and painting, is generally overlooked in the art of the Middle Ages. While the medieval garden and the city are well mapped, the medieval wilderness remains relatively trackless. Yet the use of setting to represent interior experience may be traced back to the Neo-Platonic use of space and movement to define spiritual development. Separating themselves as far as possible from the material world, such writers as Origen and Plotinus avoided use of representational detail in their spatial models; however, both the visual artists and the authors who adopted the Neo-Platonic paradigm, elaborated their emotional spaces with the details of the classical locus amoenus and of the exegetical desert, while retaining the philosophical concern with spiritual transition. Analysis of wilderness as an image for spiritual and emotional transition in medieval literature and art relates the texts to an iconographic tradition which, along with motifs of city and garden, provides a spatial representation of interior progress, as the medieval dialectic process provides a paradigm for intellectual resolution. Such an analysis relates the motif to the core of medieval intellectual experience, and further suggests significant connections between medieval and modern narratives in regard to the representation of interior experience. The Divine Comedy and related Continental texts employ both classical and exegetical sources in the representation of psychological transition and spiritual conversion. Similar techniques are also apparent in English texts such as Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon elegies, in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, and Troilus and Criseyde, and in the northern English The Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These literary texts, further, include both ideas and techniques which are analogous to those of visual arts, where frescos and altarpieces show the wilderness as metaphor for transition, and where manuscript illuminations relate this visual concept to texts. Thus, the wilderness as a landscape of personal crisis becomes in the Middle Ages a significant part of the representation of interior experience in painting and in literature.

Includes vita. / Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 187 pages. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: The contemporary concept of wilderness, which is central to environmental theory and activism, is both a help and a hindrance to government policy and to popular environmental beliefs. The Judeo-Christian religious tradition and Locke's property theory provides much of the western cultural and historical basis of humans' environmental attitudes that basically engender exploitation. I argue that a more precise interpretation of Genesis and of Locke reveals that both sources actually promote environmental stewardship while decrying ecological abuse. Next I analyze the history and shortcomings of various wilderness concepts. These shortcomings are all forms of an exclusionist mentality and result in some harmful theoretical and practical applications. / ABSTRACT: Some of these applications include the separation of humans from nature, and the propensity of governments and the public to allow ecological degradation in non-wilderness areas. Yet there are beneficial aspects to wilderness that contribute to a deeper understanding of human nature and our place in the world. Wilderness helps us to remember our wild and primal aspects that provide a connection with nature. In light of the perils and power of wilderness I offer a new, radical, inclusive, and expansive notion of wilderness that I name "dwellness." Dwellness is a normative ethical position where all areas upon the earth ought to be viewed by people in the same way as wilderness areas are currently viewed, but with some modifications. Unlike wilderness, dwellness includes humans within nature and also contains the idea of sustainable living practices. To support dwellness I turn to Martin Heidegger. / ABSTRACT: By identifying the world as a place where we dwell and in which we belong, we come to a more profound understanding of Being, or existence, in general and of our own particular modes of being. By learning to look at the world in this new, yet old, way we may then understand how important and central is the world, a mode of Being, to the existence and maintenance of our Being. Finally, I answer some possible objections to dwellness. These objections revolve around problems of industrial pollution (waste), which, under dwellness, would have to be considered natural. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

For centuries, Western societies thought of wilderness as a barren, desolate place that harboured temptation and sin. Over the last hundred and fifty years, a marked shift has occurred in Western perception of this so-called savage place; it has become revered, protected, and even worshipped. What was once the Devil's playground is now thought to provide a locus of spiritual regeneration and hope for the future. In North America, this pronounced shift is thought to coincide with notions of the sublime and the frontier. This study explores the perceptions of wilderness among Chinese Canadian immigrants in British Columbia, people who have been less influenced by concepts of the sublime and frontier. It examines closely the idea that wilderness today is a self-evident construct that holds across most inhabitants of the province. Instead, ideas about wilderness held by people who have immigrated from China, similar to the ideas held by early immigrants from Europe, are influenced by tradition (especially Confucianism, Taoism, and, more recently, Maoism), space (i.e. coming from densely populated areas), and language. Through this study, it has become apparent that the language and discourse surrounding wilderness in Canada is markedly different from that of Chinese Canadian immigrants. While the language and meaning of wilderness, as referred to in Western society, is assumed relatively easily for interviewees, the identification with moral and aesthetic responses common to discussions of wilderness in North America is much less likely to manifest itself. Wilderness, which represented barrenness and desolation to interviewees when they lived in China, has come to represent forests, mountains, animals, and lack of human influence. What previously had different philosophical meaning, now, in a cognitive sense, represents beauty and, potentially, a locus of spirituality. The results of this study have important consequences for decision-making in cross-cultural environments. Policy surrounding wilderness or environmental preservation may be without meaning or relevance to new immigrants, who bring with them shared meanings and relationships to nature that may or may not be incongruous with Canadian environmental policy. In facing such debates, it is crucial to understand the perceptions of various players and how those ideas are linked to tradition, language, and the geography of the familiar. It is also critical to ask - What is wilderness and why are we protecting it above all else?

For centuries, Western societies thought of wilderness as a barren, desolate place that harboured temptation and sin. Over the last hundred and fifty years, a marked shift has occurred in Western perception of this so-called savage place; it has become revered, protected, and even worshipped. What was once the Devil's playground is now thought to provide a locus of spiritual regeneration and hope for the future. In North America, this pronounced shift is thought to coincide with notions of the sublime and the frontier. This study explores the perceptions of wilderness among Chinese Canadian immigrants in British Columbia, people who have been less influenced by concepts of the sublime and frontier. It examines closely the idea that wilderness today is a self-evident construct that holds across most inhabitants of the province. Instead, ideas about wilderness held by people who have immigrated from China, similar to the ideas held by early immigrants from Europe, are influenced by tradition (especially Confucianism, Taoism, and, more recently, Maoism), space (i.e. coming from densely populated areas), and language. Through this study, it has become apparent that the language and discourse surrounding wilderness in Canada is markedly different from that of Chinese Canadian immigrants. While the language and meaning of wilderness, as referred to in Western society, is assumed relatively easily for interviewees, the identification with moral and aesthetic responses common to discussions of wilderness in North America is much less likely to manifest itself. Wilderness, which represented barrenness and desolation to interviewees when they lived in China, has come to represent forests, mountains, animals, and lack of human influence. What previously had different philosophical meaning, now, in a cognitive sense, represents beauty and, potentially, a locus of spirituality. The results of this study have important consequences for decision-making in cross-cultural environments. Policy surrounding wilderness or environmental preservation may be without meaning or relevance to new immigrants, who bring with them shared meanings and relationships to nature that may or may not be incongruous with Canadian environmental policy. In facing such debates, it is crucial to understand the perceptions of various players and how those ideas are linked to tradition, language, and the geography of the familiar. It is also critical to ask - What is wilderness and why are we protecting it above all else? / Science, Faculty of / Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for / Graduate

Increasingly popular methods for managing impacts of tourism in nature-based settings include collaborative and voluntary codes of conduct. In southeast Alaska, for example, the Tourism Best Management Practices (TBMP) in Juneau and Wilderness Best Management Practices (WBMP) in Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness have been created to address shore and marine based tourism (e.g., cruise ships). This thesis contains three articles examining stakeholder: (a) definitions of wilderness and their influence on perceptions of the WBMP process, (b) motivations for collaboration in the WBMP and effects of this process on stakeholder relations, and (c) perceptions of indicators in the WBMP and motivations for compliance. Data were obtained from 28 interviews with tour operators, cruise industry representatives, US Forest Service personnel, and local residents. Findings in the first article showed that most respondents had some degree of purism in their definitions of wilderness (e.g., solitude, minimal impact), although cruise industry personnel had less purist definitions. With the exception of cruise representatives, most respondents felt that the wilderness character of this wilderness area was being threatened by vessel traffic, especially cruise ships. Most interviewees supported the WBMP as an alternative to regulations because it allowed for personal freedom and input into rulemaking, but many felt that the WBMP may be unable to address some future effects of tourism in the area. Many of the smaller and more purist operators felt that if the pristine character of this area was threatened, they might support regulations. Most stakeholders, however, displayed a type of cognitive dissonance by expressing concern over threats to the wilderness character of this area, yet rejecting formal regulations that may be needed for protecting the wilderness experiences they value most. Results from the second article demonstrated that the WBMP has enhanced stakeholder relations by improving communication and dialogue, and instilling an ethic of compromise and sharing. Lack of trust, however, was a concern, especially between smaller tour operators and cruise lines due to a perception that cruise lines are not following all of the WBMP guidelines. There was concern regarding how inclusive the WBMP should be, as many cruise representatives felt that local residents should not participate. Respondents also stated some concerns with Juneau's TBMP that could be used as lessons for improving the WBMP (e.g., noncompliance, incentives, monitoring). Findings covered in the third article showed that stakeholders considered the most contentious guideline in the WBMP to be the preservation of solitude, but they felt that the most important guidelines involved environmental factors such as impacts of tourism on seals. Compliance with the WBMP guidelines was motivated by altruism, peer pressure, and self-interest. Noncompliance was attributed to a lack of awareness of the WBMP and effects of noncompliant behavior, and perceptions that the WBMP was an example of government interference in private business operations. These findings may help agencies continue facilitating the WBMP and similar collaborative processes in other locales. / Graduation date: 2012

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Montana, 2004. / Typescript. Additional information available on author's web site. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-142).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 266-280).

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2006. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 127 p. : ill., maps. Includes bibliographical references.