After the Hiking Tour: Walkers’ Behaviour

Pedestrianism is a recreational, leisure, sporting, and tourist activity that requires the creation of strategies to ensure the sustainability and profitability of resources. It is essential to understand, beyond the motivations for seeking a particular region for nature hiking, whether there is concern about signalling problems detected along the route after completing the course. As part of the CLICTOUR project – Climate change resilient tourism in protected areas of Northern Portugal, we seek to understand the reasons why hikers do not repeat their choice of pedestrian route and whether there is a concern to signal detected problems to local authorities along the pedestrian route. The research we conducted allowed us to understand that long-distance hikers tend to report situations of absence and vandalism of signalling, as well as rubbish dumping sites. As for the reasons for not repeating the pedestrian route, participants who prefer to do local routes stop doing them due to the lack of maintenance. Those who prefer local routes give reasons such as the lack of maintenance, degree of difficulty, lack of support infrastructure, slippery, muddy and/or rocky paths, and paths with poor vegetation. The offer of pedestrian routes is fundamental to organize the use of forest spaces, especially reserve and nature protection spaces. For the sustainability of natural areas, it is essential to have communication strategies capable of receiving feedback from hikers in order to improve the experience of others.