Record Details
Weather as an influencing factor in the use of Oregon's coastal recreation areas
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Weather as an influencing factor in the use of Oregon's coastal recreation areas |
| Names |
Rense, William Childs, 1944-
(creator) Jensen, J. Granville (advisor) |
| Date Issued | 1973-08-18 (iso8601) |
| Note | Graduation date: 1974 |
| Abstract | The role of weather in influencing tourist-recreation visitation to the Oregon coast during the six-month summer season of May through October has been investigated by this research. In addition, the normal day-to-day fluctuations in coastal visitation has been determined. Based upon the normal visitation, the tourist-recreation season on Oregon's coast can be considered in five phases. Phase I, the pre-Memorial Day period, is characterized by low weekday visitation, but high weekend visitation. Phase II, following the Memorial Day weekend, is a period of increasing weekday visitation. This phase lasts until after the Fourth of July holiday. Phase III, the height of the tourist-recreation season, begins seven weeks after Memorial Day, or about the 10th to the 15th of July. This phase contains a sudden upsurge in activity during the first two weeks of August as visitation reaches the highest values of the year. An abrupt decline in weekday visitation during the days before Labor Day brings an end to Phase III. Phase IV, the period of declining visitation, continues from Labor Day until well into October. It is characterized by a slight increase in visitation during mid-September when many retired people go on vacation. Low winter visitation begins after mid- October and can be considered as Phase V. The beginning of this phase constitutes a logical conclusion to the summer tourist-recreation season. Relationships between daily weather and tourist-recreation along the Oregon coast were investigated by both graphic analysis and techniques of quantification utilizing auto-regression and multiple regression analysis. The results from these two methods of analysis were somewhat in conflict with each other. Graphic analysis reveals strong correlations between weather conditions and visitation under certain circumstances. In some cases, traffic volumes were found to vary by as much as 40% of their summer weekday mean values in response to weather. Other types of visitation, such as motel occupancy, also showed response to weather. The attempt to quantify the overall seasonal effect of weather was successful in that the results were highly significant at the 1% level. However, the total variation in visitation found to correlate with weather was small, not more than 15% of the variability remaining after removal of the weekly cycle from the visitation data. This small figure, however, is not completely indicative of true weather-visitation relationships because of numerous complicating factors. Thus, this research demonstrated a significant correlation between weather and coastal recreation visitation. This relationship is strongest on weekends and in certain phases of the tourist-recreation season--particularly in Phases I and IV. |
| Genre | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Topic | Recreation areas -- Oregon |
| Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/1957/45611 |
