Samaneh Pouryazdi

Investigating the Trend of Outdoor Recreation Demand in Parks of Qum City

Abstract

Today, the concept of city isn’t conceivable without recreation areas and a range of recreational resources within the cities are inevitable. In order to establish better parks and recreation areas, it is necessary to systematically identify and assess the potential of available resources. Tourism, like any other industry is affected by supply and demand and a common method of tourism resource assessment is through the demand approach by conducting visitor surveys. In this method major components that contribute to the overall attractiveness of parks and lead to a satisfying experience are evaluated. City of Qom may attract many tourists but it lacks developments in construction and equipments necessary for parks and recreation areas. Furthermore, not much research has been done in Qom parks and recreational areas to find out people preferences and contribute their ideas and requirements into sustainable landscape design. For this study, the largest park in each of the four areas in Qom city including, Hashemi, Nabovat, Fadak, and Alavi was selected. And then three questionnaire was designed. The first questionnaire was designed based on Clawson method and it consisted of three parts: personal, economic and social information of visitors, information about access to the park and desirability of the park from the visitor's point of view. It was completed by 385 visitors. In the second questionnaire, major and minor effective factors on demand for urban parks was designed to a hierarchical structure for paired comparisons and determine the relative importance of affective factors on outdoor recreation demand. This questionnaire was completed by 32 visitors. In the third questionnaire, Qom parks were compared at the terminal levels of hierarchy structure by 4 experts. The result from these questionnaires identified outdoor recreation demand in urban parks of Qom and the individual demand for outdoor recreation and its relationship with the effective factors on outdoor recreation demand (trend of outdoor recreation demand) and also important factors of urban parks designing and their relative importance from visitor's point of view and recreational assessment of parks under study from the perspective of terminal levels of hierarchy structure. Based on the result, from the visitor's point of view, facilities, peripheral attractions, tourism resources and accessibility are respectively the most important effective factors on outdoor recreation in urban parks. Among the four parks compared in this study, Alavi park ranked first and Hashemi, Fadak and Nabovat parks achieved to second, third and fourth place respectively. Finally for the adjustment of demand for urban parks and bring it to an optimum level, outdoor recreation carrying capacity (physical, real and effective carrying capacity) of urban parks was evaluated through analyzing of first questionnaire and collected climatic data from meteorology station of Qom. Hence, the effective carrying capacity of Hashemi, Nabovat, Fadak and Alavi parks was computed 20019, 19190, 24000 and 78677 (person in day) respectively. But demand level is less than carrying capacity in winter and autumn seasons and weekdays. It increases in spring and summery seasons, weekend and holydays and after sunset and it exceeds from the carrying capacity. So given the peak time of visit, the park's capacity must be tolerate this times and this issue should be considered in planning and management of parks. Therefore, park managers need to plan carefully for equal distribution of visitors in different seasons and times to reduce pressure on park resources and facilities.