Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

Department

Agriculture & Tourism

Abstract

In the past decade, state government appropriation reductions have forced park agencies to seek other sources of revenue to support park operations. To overcome shrinking budgets, many public park agencies embrace private-sector business models and investigate customer satisfaction, service quality, and user fee structures. The purpose of this study was to obtain public input regarding service quality, general satisfaction, and experience use history of state park visitation. A total of 382 Oklahoma state park users completed an online survey and were sorted into Pro-Fee (n = 200,52%) and No-Fee (n = 182,48%) groups for one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) tests. The researchers found a significant difference between the two groups on service quality, but not on overall satisfaction or behavioral intention (e.g., revisit, recommending the park). When comparing Pro-Fee and No-Fee groups, researchers found no statistically significant variance in visitors' demographics, such as gender, education level, and income, whereas the number of years that had passed since the visitors' first visit showed a significant difference between the groups. The findings of this study provide valuable insight for discussions related to entrance fees and service fees in state park systems.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5070/P537151753

First Page

244

Last Page

253

Publication Title

Parks Stewardship Forum

Publisher

George Wright Society

Comments

Original Citation:

Liu, S., Wu, N., & Bradley, M.J. (2021). To fee or not to fee? Satisfaction, quality, and support of entrance fee of a state park system. Parks Stewardship Forum, 37(1), 244-252. https://doi.org/10.5070/P537151753

This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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