Abstract
The purpose of this research is to examine resource characteristics affecting the overall recreation suitability of natural recreation forest. On the basis of resource-based approach, we had constructed a conceptual framework for this research and found one dependent variable of the overall recreation suitability and eight independent variables, representing characteristics of recreation resource. After questionnaire surveying of 690 visitors from 10 among 72 natural recreation forests in Korea. We have analyzed the data using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression method. We have found that 1) physical factor of recreation resources turned out to be statistically insignificant and the direction of relationship between independent variable and dependent variable is the same as that of dependent variable, 2) noise, sound and smell turned out to be the most important variable in terms of magnitude of independent variable and wild life turned out to be the next important variable, and 3) noise, sound and smell turned out to have aboutn 3.3 times greater thant that of landscape, judging from the absolute value of standardized regression coefficient. The research findings can be used for planning and designing of natural recreation forests based on recreation suitability of forest resources, and will provide pertinent guidelines for management of recreation resources of natural recreation forests. The approach and method of evaluating recreation suitability employed in this research provide us valid and reliable results and will be highly useful in other resource-based recreation development. We suggest that the differences in recreation suitability between private and public recreation forests and the relationship between user-satisfaction and recreation suitability of natural recreation forests must be examined in the future research.
