Anza Borrego Desert State Park - California State Parks - State of ...

Final Report – October 2001
The question for the Fish Creek photo series was identical as well:
One of the issues in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is to provide recreation
opportunities while maintaining solitude in the more remote camping areas. The
computer-generated photographs simulate a range of levels of recreational use. The
managers are interested in your opinion of how the number of other groups affects
your feelings of solitude. To help us assess this, please indicate the acceptability of
the conditions represented by each photo. A rating of –4 signifies conditions are very
unacceptable; a rating of +4 is very acceptable.
In the Fish Creek sample, visitors’ responses were generally very similar to those
collected from the Blair Valley participants (Tables 47 and 48, Figures 38 and 39). Photo
3 demonstrates a greater decrease in acceptability compared to the drop from Photos 1
to 2. This is also seen in the Blair Valley sample. Nevertheless, as in the other group,
the majority of visitors surveyed still found conditions depicted in Photo 3 to be
acceptable. Responding to the conditions depicted in Photo 4, a majority of visitors
surveyed found the impacts unacceptable, just as they did in the Blair Valley survey
population. In both locations, the fall visitors appeared to be a little more sensitive to the
first intrusion than spring visitors were. The amount of variability in scores (range of
responses) appears slightly larger among Fish Creek participants than those in Blair
Valley, especially in the fall sample.
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