Psychological restoration, place attachment and satisfaction in birders and non-birding visitors

Travelling to special places to observe birds is becoming an important niche in ecotourism. Here, we addressed differences between birdwatchers and non-birders to gain insight into the different needs (satisfaction, psychological restoration, and place attachment) at the same locality and during the identical time period at eight birdwatching sites in SW Germany. The study took place between April 9, 2022 and June 26, 2022; N = 426 participants were surveyed with a questionnaire on site. Non-birders had a higher visit satisfaction, while birders had a higher loyalty, had a longer visit duration, and higher visitation frequency. Visit satisfaction was positively correlated with place attachment and psychological restoration. Destination loyalty was unrelated to psychological restoration in birders but was positively related in non-birders. Experiencing a subjective highlight, like a specific bird species or encountering an interesting animal, led to higher psychological restoration and visit satisfaction in both groups, but non-birders generally had a higher psychological restoration and visit satisfaction. Place attachment was not predicted by a highlight nor by being a birder or not.Management implications: Visitors of bird rich areas or nature reserves differ strongly whether they are birders or not. As birders invest more effort in their visit (travel, revisit, loyalty) they expect more from their visit (e.g., Stemmer et al., 2022). We also emphasized the importance of a highlight, which makes a visit for non-birders more attractive. Highlights, for example, are observations of a bird that have a personal meaning, and that may be fascinating or just interesting to observe. Therefore, it is important that managers of parks or nature reserves draw specific attention to highlights that are currently observable and that increase visitor satisfaction. This can be done by providing information (Hughes & Morrison-Saunders, 2002), such as pop-up presentations or by announcing it on webpages. However, highlights are different among birders and non-birders and this needs to be taken into account, e.g., by flexible announcements. To 'hear' what the tourists say (Prakash et al., 2019) is an important management tool to tailor visitor experiences, and birders and non-birders differ, so that nature reserves should offer different strains of experience for both, the specialized birder and the nature-interested tourist with lower knowledge.