Further Research

We would like to collect more data on National Park visitors to improve how we manage land, natural resource and social or environmental impacts. This section shows the large research questions where we would like to work with partners to answer these questions:

How many people visit the National Park? And where exactly are they? Volume visits to protected areas like national parks are difficult to measure. Further research is needed to investigate the actual levels of visitors to the Peak District National Park. One area of promise is mobile telecom data.

How much is too much? Is the carrying capacity of tourism measurable across a regional landscape?

Is all Tourism good? What is the impact on the environment and local communities is. What can we do about it?

What jobs for local people? What types of jobs does Tourism provide and what proportion of these are offered to local people

Why don’t people visit the National Park? The Peak District National Park Authority, aims to improve diversity in its audience, greater understanding of non-visitors is required to understand motivations and barriers for not visiting the Peak District.

What about economic non visitors? Research in to non-visitors thus far has focused on surrounding communities. There are also economic non-visitors. There is potential to grow visits from places further away such as London and international Tourists who will spend more and stay longer in the Peak District.

The destination and quality of visitor attractions and sites fit for our visitor profile. Does our destination match our desires to broaden the visitor profile? What is the quality of these facilities and experiences? Could we get more data from trip advisor or Visit Peak District?

Recreational use – what’s happening? Data such as STRAVA API can give us a good indication of large volumes of recreational use. However, it remains expensive to procure the data. National parks have been working collectively to try to source this data.

Further research on the age, ethnicity and social backgrounds of non-visitors

It would be useful to identify accommodation provision in the wider region