A Two-Year Survey to Assess Visitors’ Marine Reserve Awareness, Demographics, and Trip Characteristics

Beyond the research conducted by the ODFW Marine Reserves Program, the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve and surrounding area is attracting additional human dimensions research. One example is the recently released report from a two-year, year round, visitor survey conducted at shoreside locations along the Cape Perpetua Marine Reserve.

The idea for the study came from the Cape Perpetua Collaborative and was led by the Surfrider Foundation in collaboration with the ODFW Marine Reserves Program and the City of Yachats.

This survey of visitors looked at marine reserve awareness and knowledge, demographics and characteristics, and tourism decisions and opinions. Close to 1,000 visitors took the survey. The report reveals information of interest and use to local businesses, local municipalities, and natural resource agencies such as why these places are special to people and how local businesses and municipalities may better serve and inform coastal visitors. The City of Yachats was particularly interested in why Cape Perpetua was a destination, where do visitors stay and what types of services might the city or local businesses consider investing in to better serve their visitors.

In addition, this study provides comparisons with previous marine reserve visitor and resident surveys conducted by ODFW and our research collaborators. For instance, we see that awareness of marine reserves by visitors to the Cape Perpetua area is increasing when we compare visitors surveyed at Cape Perpetua in this most recent survey to those visitors surveyed by ODFW in 2012 and 2014.

Check out the report to see additional results, information on the study design, and more.