Standards of Quality for Parks and Protected Areas Applying Normative Theory and Methods in U.S. National Parks

Indicators and standards of quality have become an important component of contemporary management frameworks designed to help protect park resources and the quality of the visitor experience. Normative theory and related empirical methods have been adapted from sociology and applied to surveys of park visitors and other stakeholders to help guide the formulation of standards of quality. This article reviews this growing body of research and identifies a number of important issues including norm prevalence, norm salience, alternative evaluative dimensions, question and response formats, norm congruence and validity, norm crystallization, the effect of existing conditions, visual research methods, and norm stability. We conclude by encouraging researchers to more explicitly link normative theory in recreation management to the cultures in which parks and protected areas are embedded.