An Evaluation of the “Authority of the Resource” Interpretive Technique by Rangers in Eight Wilderness/Backcountry Areas

Abstract

The Authority of the Resource Technique (ART) is a multi-pronged interpretive approach for dealing with undesirable visitor behavior in protected areas. Although ART has been used and supported anecdotally by agency personnel since 1991, this study provides the first systematic field evaluation of its use. During the 1998 field season, 25 USFS and NPS wilderness/backcountry rangers from seven areas were given training in the use of ART and asked to make structured journal entries each time they chose to use ART while addressing undesirable visitor behaviors. An elaboration of the theoretical grounding for ART was used to help frame the evaluation. Among the results were findings that rangers using only ART with no law enforcement recorded high levels of verbalized intention to comply, observed compliance, and rated ART contacts as very or moderately effective for more than 75% of those contacts. Contacts rated as “very effective” were likely to include more of the multiple intervention strategies made available by the ART approach. Recommendations are given that could improve the effectiveness of ART and its ability to influence visitor beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors.