Climate change impacts on motivations, perceptions and adaptation of recreational alpinists - Archive ouverte HAL
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2024

Climate change impacts on motivations, perceptions and adaptation of recreational alpinists

Résumé

Climate change is leading to profound changes in mountain areas, including glacier retreat, permafrost degradation and all the geomorphological processes associated with paraglacial dynamics. In the Alps, these dynamics are having a serious impact on outdoor recreation, with increasing difficulty in accessing mountain huts, but also on alpinism, now included in UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage. For example, depending on their geographical characteristics, alpinism routes are becoming more difficult, more dangerous and sometimes disappearing due to the effects of climate change. This has led to changes in the way mountain guides work, with adaptation strategies such as changing the place and time they work.Compared to a growing literature on the adaptation of mountain professionals to the impacts of climate change, little research has been done on outdoor recreationists and their perceptions and behaviours towards climate change. As they face a rapidly changing environment, it is important to understand how recreational alpinists perceive the changes and how they adapt their behaviours to them. This knowledge would be valuable in informing mountain authorities and adapting the safety information they provide to recreationists. Accordingly, the aim of this presentation is to discuss the first results of a study aimed at filling this knowledge gap.A mixed method was developed, including a quantitative survey measuring adaptation behaviours, perceptions of climate change, motivations and various socio-demographics of recreational alpinists. The survey was distributed through social media (mainly Facebook and specialised media such as Camp2Camp of Hikr). Based on the results (n=1071), a latent class analysis was conducted based on motivations, perceptions and adaptation behaviour. Interviews were conducted to explore in more detail how perceptions of change influence their behaviours.The results of the quantitative survey indicate the presence of four classes, namely the "experts" with high motivation to achieve goals, a very frequent practice at a high level, adapting mainly by temporal substitution; the "causal practitioners", mainly motivated by the environment, have a causal practice and moderate adaptation behaviour, mainly with more information and temporal substitution; "environmentalists", who practice mainly for environmental purposes, have a very high perception of the impact and adapt strongly by informational coping; and "experimental sceptics", who have a good level of activity, practice for a long time but do not perceive the impact and have low substitution behaviour. These findings are expanded with interviews and discussed according to the literature.

Domaines

Géographie
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Dates et versions

hal-04560743 , version 1 (26-04-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04560743 , version 1

Citer

Emmanuel Salim, Anne-Sophie Crepeau, Jacques Mourey, Philipp Sacher. Climate change impacts on motivations, perceptions and adaptation of recreational alpinists. Climate Change Tourism and Recreation conference, CCTR, Apr 2024, Kamloops, Canada. ⟨hal-04560743⟩
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