Introduction
The improvement of living standards increased leisure time, and the leisure time increased the interests in recreation providing health and pleasure. Accordingly, forest recreation has been focused on (Suh, 2004). Jin and Kang (1996) defined that forest recreation, as one of outdoor recreation focused on appreciating landscape, is an outdoor or amusement activity into forestry which makes citizens escape from their busy cities. In the United States, Germany and other advanced countries, there are various forest recreation areas which can meet applying forests’ multipurpose and minimizing environmental impact on forests through building recreational facilities. In South Korea, the forests, which hold 64% of the total land area, have been used for forest products and recreation assets (Park, 2002).
Korea Forest Service (KSF, 2015) established ten-year master plan for developing forest resources in 1988 and formed the legal system for designation, creation, and management of recreational forests through amending previous forest law in 1990. Since then the forest law was divided into three acts such as Act for creation and management of forest resources, Act for forest culture and recreation, and Act for conservation of Baekdudaegan Mountain Range. That change in the forest legal condition has highlighted the importance of natural recreation forests increasingly (Han et al., 2008; Sim and Lee, 2010). Natural recreation forest is the forest created for emotional cultivation, health and recreation, forest education, and so on according to the section two of Article 2 in Act for forest culture and recreation. This means that natural recreation forests should give services such as mental and physical relaxation, maintenance and promotion of health, and nature study as well as should make users satisfied at the same time (Choi et al., 2015; Lee and Kim, 2001). Promoting users’ satisfaction can make the natural recreation forest business successful financially through bring more visitors repeatedly, spreading by word of mouth, contributing citizens’mental and physical relaxation largely, maintaining and promoting health which related legal systems aim, and achieving political obligations (Choi et al., 2015; Hwang and Hwang, 2005; Taylor and Baker, 1994).
In South Korea, natural recreation forests increase more and more in their number and the number of users increases radically because the natural recreation forests can be created by various hosts such as KSF, local governments, and even individual (Lee, J.Y., 2012). Natural recreation forests in operation count up to one hundred fifty classified to forty national ones, ninety two city and provincial ones, and eighteen private ones. The number of visitors counts thirteen million nine hundred fifty five thousand (KFS, 2015). However, Lee, J.Y. (2012) argued that all the business of natural recreation forests endures deficit operation and just hold the budget for the minimum maintenance so that the forests could not meet various demands of visitors. In additions, the number of visitors depends on seasonal condition, and management manpower is acquired far more.
Although users showed various demands for natural recreation forests as they became bigger in quantity, their quality has not kept up with their quantity at all and that was because the creation and operation of natural recreation forests were not due to consumers (users), but due to providers (Suh, 2004). Suh (2004) claimed that there were necessary ways to users’ satisfaction that users’ needs should be taken more importantly than providers’ conveniences were taken, the quality of the forests should be considered more importantly than the quantity, and software such as forest education programs should precede hardware such as recreaton facilities. National Natural Recreation Forest Office (NNRFO), executing national natural recreation forests in a private way of business, was established to improve forest culture and relaxation service of natural recreation forests in 2006 (Han et al., 2008). Through the paradigm shift that the way of natural recreation forest management changed from focusing on provider-oriented hardware to user-oriented software such as providing high-quality services as well as promoting users’satisfaction, this users’ satisfaction has been interested in (Choi et al., 2015).
In Gyeongnam, there are eleven natural recreation forests including three national ones (National Recreation Forest Management Office, 2016). Jinju City is planning a natural recreation forest near civic residential areas which belongs to the big project for creation of wood culture experience center into Mt. Wora in Jinsungmyun supported by KSF’s national finance. Mt. Wora natural recreation forest will be a suburban natural recreation forest in Jinju City, the center of western Gyeongnam and one of Innovation Cities. The purpose of this study was to enhance users’ satisfaction at suburban natural recreational forests and the results could be used to propose a consumer-oriented plan. Thus, this study was conducted to analyze the local residents’ recognition of awareness, importance, preference and visit intention when they were questioned of Mt. Wora natural recreation forest master plan.
Method
1. Study site
Mt. Wora natural recreational forest, the multipurpose complex providing forest experiences such as forest recreation, forest leisure and sports, forest education and so on, will be created in Mt. Wora, Jinsungmyun, Jinju city, Gyeongnam Province. The forest area will cover 200ha. Mt. Wora, designated a urban nature park on March 6 in 1986 (No. 93 of Ministry of Construction and Transportation Notice), is located ten kilometers from the downtown of Jinju City and located nearby Namhae Expressway. This mountain with rolling but not too steep hills and beautiful forests calls family backpackers every weekend and has a huge reservoir called Keumhoji with its area of 204,937 m2 .
2. Survey and analysis
The questionnaire was included questions to analyze users recognition of natural recreation forest, especially Wora natural recreation forest (Figure 1). Seven questions of them were about users’ visit frequency, visit purposes, preferences and general users’ satisfaction before Mt. Wora natural recreation forest was established; other seven questions were for awareness and necessity of natural recreational forests, importance of facilities and program of natural recreational forests, and visit intension after Mt. Wora natural recreational forest is established; other three questions were about users experiences and behaviors related to accommodation in natural recreation forests; other nine questions were about preference and importance of accommodation and related convenience facilities, and visit intention after Mt. Wora natural recreational forest is established; other four questions were about necessity of convenient facilities; other eight questions were for awareness, necessity, and preference of facilities and program providing forest culture and education, and visit intension after Mt. Wora natural recreational forest is established; other six questions were about awareness, necessity, and preference of facilities and program providing forest leisure and sports; some open-ended questions related former questions were included; five questions were about socio-demographic background of respondents such as residents, workers and university students dwelling in Jinju city.
Fig. 1
The scheme and process of questionnaire aire analysis on the residents’ recognition for the plan of Mt. Wora national recreation forest in Jinju city: the residents’ recognition includes awareness, importance, preference, visit intention etc.
Excluding questions for socio-demographic background of respondents and without interval scale or ratio scale, questions about recognition of respondents such as awareness, necessity, importance and preference were made with respondents rate on the Likert Scale of 1 to 5. In the survey, 1 went to ‘Strongly agree’ while 5 went to ‘Strongly disagree’ and then the scores were converted with the way of inversion that 1 was to 5 and 5 was to 1 (Kim and Huh, 2004, Kim and Huh, 2016; Kim et al., 2009).
The survey was conducted during two months, June and July in 2016 targeting residents, workers, or university students dwelling in Jinju city and was supported by examiners who were taught about the purpose and method of this survey in advance. 529 of all questionnaires, excluding improper answers not fully or poorly covered, were final valid samples. With collected data, frequency analysis and so on were conducted by using a statistical analysis program, SPSS ver. 20.0(IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).
Result and discussion
1. Socio-demographic background
Table 1 shows 529 respondents’ socio-demographic background. Among all respondents, the male counted for 60.1%. The ages of twenties and fifties accounted for about 20% of respondents respectively. The 62% of respondents graduated colleges or got higher education. The government employee and office worker counted for 16.5% and 37.1%, respectively. The 82.4% of all respondents lived in Jinju City. Lee, C.K. (2012) reported that among the users who visited Mt. Geumwon natural recreation forest, the male counted for 47%, the age from thirties to forties counted for 65%, and college graduates counted for 63%. Oh and Kim (2008) showed that the main users of natural recreation forests were college graduated company employees, the economically active population aged between 20 and 30. Kim et al. (2007) analyzed the answers of 5,000 respondents who visited national natural recreation forests of South Korea and reported that among all the respondents, the male covered 68.7%, the age of thirties and forties covered 46.3% and 36.2%, respectively, 89.6% was covered by graduated colleges or higher education, and office worker, professionals, and government employees or the military accounted for 35.5%, 20.7%, and 16.5%, respectively. Park et al. (2013) studied the uses and benefits on national and local authorized natural recreation forests of South Korea and reported that the respondents’ ages were followed by forties (27.4%), thirties (26.2%) and fifties (23.5%), and the occupations were followed by professionals (23.7%) and office workers (21.6%). The result of socio-demographical background shows that the respondents hold higher frequency in male respondents like the result of Kim et al. (2007), higher frequency in education like the results of Kim et al. (2007), Lee, C.K. (2012), and Oh and Kim (2008), and higher frequency in office workers like the results of Kim et al. (2007), Oh and Kim (2008), and Park et al. (2013). Thus, the respondents of this survey were concluded to show similar tendency to socio-demographic backgrounds of previous studies.
Table 1
Respondent socio-demographic background in questionnaire analysis.
2. Before the establishment, users’ behavior and satisfaction on Mt. Wora
The result that was analyzed the use frequency of the respondents up to recently, before Mt. Wora natural recreational forest was established, showed that 69.6% of the respondents had used the mountain and the frequency of visiting ‘1 or 2 per year’ counted for 30.2% (Table 2). Although Mt. Wora was in suburban, the use frequency of ‘Never’ accounted for 30.4% because the respondents were seemed to include new comers who moved into newly developed housing in a Innovation City and was working for LH, Korea South-East Power Co. Ltd., Defense Agency for Technology and Quality and so on.
Table 2
Resident use frequency of Mt. Wora before the establishment.
| Frequency | Valid percent (%) | |
|---|---|---|
|
|
||
| Almost every day | 26 | 6 |
| Every week | 74 | 16 |
| Once a month | 87 | 18 |
| 1 or 2 per a year | 143 | 30 |
| Never | 144 | 30 |
The preference of personal goals of visiting Mt. Wora was followed by ‘Exercise (hiking/trekking)’ (3.9), ‘Recreation (stroll or green shower)’ (3.8), ‘Exploring attraction’ (temples etc.) (3.1), and ‘Watching nature (trees, flowers etc.)’ (3.1) (Table 3). Park et al. (2002) reported that the leading motives to visit natural recreation forests were followed by appreciation of clean water and valleys, relaxation and meditation, stress relief, escaping city life, and appreciation of nature. Kim et al. (2012) conducted the study on users characteristics of national natural recreation forests around the metropolitan area and reported that the most of users consisted of small groups of families, and recreational events included mainly water fun, recreation or relaxation, and scroll or green shower. Kim and Noh (2011) reported that users recognized natural recreational forests as places letting users spend a quiet time away from the routine. Considering the results of this study and previous studies together, the result indicates that the visiting purpose of Mt. Wora was primarily focused on health events such as exercises and scroll, and this purpose is different from the visiting purpose of other natural recreation forests providing well-made recreational facilities.
Table 3
Preference of personal goals and overall satisfaction to visit at Mt. Wora.
The overall user satisfaction was scored 3.6 (Table 3). Suh (2004) reported the mean score of user satisfaction was 3.8 based on the research on six natural recreation forests. Kim and Noh (2011) reported the mean score was 5.5 in a seven scale and this score would be 3.9 if it were converted to a five scale. Currently, the user satisfaction of Mt. Wora seems to be lower than a user satisfaction of a natural recreational forest. However, this indicates that the user satisfaction would be raised if Mt. Wora was developed to a natural recreational forest.
3. Residents’ recognition on natural recreational forests
The awareness and necessity of natural recreational forests showed 3.3 points and 4.0 points respectively (Table 4). The awareness of a natural recreational forest itself had lower score than that of the necessity though the 84.5% of all the respondents had experienced natural recreational forests as shown in Table 5. This result means a few experiences of using some natural recreational forests cannot lead users to comprehend natural recreational forests thoroughly and enjoy them fully while other existing resources of tourism and recreation made users accustomed to fully understand what to do and enjoy the resources. In other words, using natural recreation forests does not become one of common cultures yet. The result, that the necessity of natural recreational forests was scored higher compared to the awareness, is due to the increased interest in forest recreation followed by increased interest in recreation (Park et al., 2013; Suh, 2004).
Table 4
Awareness and necessity of natural recreation forest, importance of the facilities and programs, and visit intention at Mt. Wora natural recreation forest after the establishment.
| Section | Value | |
|---|---|---|
|
|
||
| Awareness | 3.3 | |
| Necessity | 4.0 | |
|
|
||
| Importance | Recreation/relaxation places | 4.2 |
| Family accommodation | 3.7 | |
| Leisure and sports | 3.4 | |
| Education | 3.7 | |
|
|
||
| Visit intent after the establishment | 3.2 | |
Table 5
Experience of visit, companion type, transportation, and duration of stay at natural recreation forests.
The importance of natural recreational forests’ facilities and programs was followed by ‘Recreation/Relaxation places’ (4.2), ‘Family accommodation’ (3.7), ‘Education’ (3.7) and ‘Leisure and sports’ (3.4). This result refers to the results from Kim et al. (2012), Park et al. (2002), Park et al. (2013) which users recognized facilities and programs of natural recreation forests importantly. It is highlighted that the respondents recognized ‘Education’, especially forest education (forest kindergartens, wood culture experience and so on) importantly as much as ‘Family accommodation’ and ‘Leisure and sports’ were some important to the respondents’ recognition. The recognition of ‘Visit intention after the establishment’ showed lower than that of the awareness, the necessity, facilities and programs though the score was 3.2 meaning more than neutral importance. Although 84.5% of all the respondents had experienced natural recreational forests, the low visit intention after the establishment of Mt. Wora natural recreation forest indicates most of the respondents have a few attraction, expectation and visit motive for the future natural recreational forest.
When the user satisfaction about forest culture education, leisure and sports and so on in existing natural recreation forests refers to previous studies, Lee and Kim (2001) reported that the users’ satisfaction on forest culture programs of suburban natural recreation forests was not too high and the current forest recreation culture was not highly rated while 74.0% of the respondents wanted to participate various recreational programs to get different experiences of forest culture. Park et al. (2002) reported the users’ satisfaction on forest guide program was low (11%) but 63.4% of the respondents wanted to participate the forest guide programs from the study on the use of natural recreation forests from the west KFS. Lee, J.Y. (2012) insisted the program including experiential, enjoyable and engaging (3E) factors should be developed. Noh and Han (2012) claimed that to improve values of natural recreation forests, the programs for families was necessary and each program such as education program, activity program, event program and so on needed to be developed separately and convenient and enjoyable facilities should be prepared. Kim et al. (2007) insisted that natural recreation forests’ software such as education and experience programs, events, tour packages should be made more attractive to let families participate and enjoy considering that most of users consisted of families. Thus, putting results of this study and previous studies together, it was concluded that the plan for Mt. Wora natural recreation forest should fully include not only recreation/relaxation places and family accommodation but also facilities and programs for education and leisure/sports.
4. Residents’ recognition on introducing facilities and programs
1) Accommodation and convenience
The result of user experience and behavior of natural recreation forest providing accommodation showed that 447 of all the respondents (84.5%) had a use experience, 64.3% visited with ‘Family/relatives’, 62.4% came to a natural recreation forest with their ‘Own cars’ and ‘1 night 2 days’ was covered 67.1% about ‘Duration of stay’ (Table 5). Park et al. (2002) reported that 61.4% of respondents visited twice and more as for user visits of natural recreation forests, Kim and Noh (2011) indicated that visitors who repeatedly experienced to visit natural recreation forests showed high preference and loyalty to natural recreation forests, and Park et al. (2013) reported that about the companion type, visit with family covered 50% because family came into the picture according to social changes. In Gyeongnam where eleven natural recreation forests including three national ones are located, local residents are supposed to have many experiences of natural recreation forests and high preference and loyalty to them. The plan for Mt. Wora natural recreation forest should be included accommodation, accommodation facilities and convenience facilities considering high frequency of family/relatives among users and high frequency of driving their own car.
Kim and Yang (2009) insisted that if the natural and environmental factors are excluded from a natural recreation forest, the most effective factor on users satisfaction is a quality of accommodation. Oh and Kim (2008) insisted that accommodation was one of main places of a natural recreation forest and should be considered as a very important facility which gives a significant impact on images and user satisfaction of a natural recreation forest as well as becomes a center part of operation and management. However, Kim and Yang (2009) argued that currently existing accommodation in natural recreation forest failed to meet users’ demand enlarged by their experiences of various individual recreation areas with unique and trendy outdoor stays because the plan for the accommodation in a natural recreation forest was made without considering users recreational characteristics and landscape factors around the forest. Thus the consumer (the user) consciousness survey was needed to change former provider-oriented concept into useroriented concept. In additions, the preference of accommodation types and the importance of accommodation facilities were analyzed as shown in Table 6 and Table 7. About the preference of accommodation types, ‘Bungalow’ accounted for 57.4% and ‘Pension’ accounted for 33.2%. This result shows that users regard bungalows as the most appropriate accommodation for a natural recreation forest. About the preference of camping types, ‘Autocamping’ accounted for 36.5% followed by ‘Glamping (32.9%).’ This result refers that users prefer convenient camping (69.4%) to common camping (30.7%).
Table 6
Preference of the types of accommodation and outdoor stay at Mt. Wora natural recreation forest after the establishment.
| Section | Type | Frequency | Valid percent (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
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| Preference | Accommodation | Condominium | 48 | 9 |
| Pension | 169 | 33 | ||
| Bungalow | 292 | 57 | ||
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| Camping | Camping | 153 | 31 | |
| Autocamping | 182 | 37 | ||
| Glamping | 164 | 33 | ||
‘Accessibility (transportation, parking),’ ‘Restroom sanitary,’ ‘Common room sanitary,’ ‘Stay at ease,’ ‘Staffs’ hospitality’ and ‘Adequacy of accommodation fee’ scored over 4.0 at the importance of accommodation facilities (Table 7). This result indicates these six of them should be considered importantly altogether in accommodation facility plan. ‘Use intent for Mt. Wora natural recreation forest after the establishment’ scored 2.7, lower than neutral score, and this result showed the stay one day or more days in the accommodation facilities was not necessary for the respondents, local residents, because Mt. Wora natural recreation forest was close to their residence.
Table 7
Importance of accommodation facilities and use intent at Mt. Wora natural recreation forest after the establishment.
Among convenience facilities, the score of ‘Shelter/Visitor information center’ was highest (4.1) followed by ‘Shop/ Convenience store (3.8)’ and ‘Forest/special products shop’ scored 2.9 (Table 8). This result shows natural recreation forests should provide for users convenience facilities such as visitor information center, stores and rest area to use it easily and conveniently.
Table 8
Necessity of facilities for the plan of Mt. Wora natural recreation forest.
| Section | Item | Value |
|---|---|---|
|
|
||
| Necessity | Shop/Convenience store | 3.8 |
| Rest facilities/cafe & restaurant | 3.2 | |
| Forest/special products shop | 2.9 | |
| Shelter/Visitor Information Center | 4.1 | |
Table 9
Awareness and necessity of forest culture education, preference of programs, and visit intent of residents at Mt. Wora natural recreation forest after the establishment.
2) Forest culture education
‘Awareness’ scored 3.1 and ‘Necessity’ scored 4.1 as for ‘Forest culture education.’ The result was the same with the residents’ recognition on the awareness and necessity of natural recreational forests. Lee and Kim (2001) reported low level of the users’ awareness of forest culture programs for suburban natural recreation forests and the quality of current forest recreation culture, and also reported that 74.0% of the respondents wanted to participate in various recreation programs which make users experience different forest cultures. Park et al. (2002) reported the satisfaction of forest guide program was low (11%) but 63.4% of the respondents wanted to participate the forest guide programs from the study on the use of natural recreation forests from the west KFS. Considering results of this study and previous studies together, there is not enough forest culture education within existing natural recreation forests’ programs or the respondents have experienced a few forest culture education. Meanwhile, recognizing that forest culture education is necessary for mental and physical recreation/ character development is due to the increased public interest of forest recreation (Suh, 2004). The preference of programs or facilities ranked ‘Forest schools and outdoor learning (3.9)’ the highest and ‘Display of forest plants (3.7)’ and ‘Interpreter’s service (3.7)’ highly. ‘Display of timbers and wood works’ ranked relatively low, and this result indicates that forest wood culture is uncommon to the respondents compared with Europe and North America and users do not have any memorable experiences from the display just like they feel impressive when they watched displayed forest plants and participated in interpreter’s guide.
Table 10
Awareness and preference of residents on leisure and sports facilities for the plan of Mt. Wora natural recreation forest.
3) Leisure and sports
The awareness of leisure and sports scored 3.2 and approximately the same with the awareness of natural recreation forest (3.3) and forest culture education (3.1). The preference of leisure and sports ranked ‘Adventures (Zip line, eco-adventure etc.) (3.4)’ the highest; ‘Group Experiences (3.3),’ ‘Mountain bike and climb (3.3)’ and ‘Paragliding and hang gliding (3.3)’ relatively high; and ‘Water sports and activities (3.2)’ relatively low. The preference of leisure and sports (3.2～3.4) was lower than the preference of forest culture education (3.4～3.9). Lee, J.Y. (2012b) claimed that the program including experiential, enjoyable and engaging (3E) factors should be created. Noh and Han (2012) claimed that to improve values of natural recreation forests, the programs for families should be needed and belonging programs such as education program, activity program, event program should be needed to be developed separately and convenient and enjoyable facilities should be prepared too. Kim et al. (2007) referred that natural recreation forests’ software such as education and experience programs, events, tour packages should be made more attractive to let families participate and enjoy considering that most of users consisted of families. Putting the results from this study and previous studies, the lower preference of leisure and sports compared to the preference of forest culture education indicates insufficiency of leisure and sports within natural recreation forests’ programs or indicates that the respondents have little experiences of leisure and sports in natural recreation forests.
Conclusion
This study was conducted to analyze the recognition on local residents’ awareness, importance, preference and visit intention of Mt. Wora natural recreation forest in order to improve user satisfaction as a suburban natural recreation forest plan was designed and established. Currently, the respondents visited Mt. Wora primarily for heath activities such as exercise and scroll rather than for many recreation facilities and landscape factors, the original purpose of visiting natural recreational forests. The user satisfaction scored 3.6, which was lower than those of recreational forests. The awareness and necessity of natural recreation forests scored 3.3 and 4.0 respectively. The awareness of a natural recreation forest itself showed relatively lower score compared to the necessity of the forest even though 84.5% of the respondents had experienced natural recreation forests. The importance of facilities and programs of a natural recreation forest ranked recreation/relaxation facilities (4.2) the highest, family accommodation (3.7)’ and education (3.7) high and leisure and sports 3.4. Noticeably, the education, especially forest education (forest kindergarten and wood culture experience) was recognized importantly as same as family accommodation, and leisure and sports were slightly important to the respondents. Thus, Mt. Wora natural recreation forest plan should include facilities and programs for education and leisure/sports as well as recreation/relaxation places and family accommodation. The respondents’ preference of bungalow (57.4%) and pension (33.2%) among accommodation types showed bungalows the most proper accommodation for natural recreation forests. In the preference about camping types, autocamping (36.5%) and glamping (32.9%) covered 69.4% with showing that users preferred more convenient camping to common camping (30.7%). At the importance of convenience facilities, accessibility (transportation, parking), restroom sanitary, common room sanitary, stay at ease, staffs’ hospitality and adequacy of accommodation fee scored over 4.0, which indicated that the six of them should be considered importantly in convenience facilities plan. The awareness and necessity of forest culture education scored 3.1 and 4.1 respectively. The preference of programs or facilities ranked forest school and outdoor learning (3.9) the highest, display of forest plant (3.7) and interpreter’s service (3.7) high. The score of the awareness of leisure and sports was 3.2. Among the preference of leisure and sports, adventures (Zip line, eco-adventure etc.) ranked the highest (3.4) followed by group experiences (3.3), mountain bike and climb (3.3), paragliding and hang gliding (3.3) and water sports and activities (3.2).
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