Social dimensions of forestry road management : a study of Wawa district residents

Abstract

This study explores the social dimension of forestry road access management in the Ontario Ministry ofNatural Resource's Wawa District (northern Ontario). Road access restrictions in the District are often implemented for the protection of remote tourism values, and many recreationists have expressed strong opposition to these restrictions. This study examines the issue from two perspectives. First, it determines residents' satisfaction levels with current forestry road management, and explores how satisfaction varies with user characteristics. Second, it determines residents' evaluations of the desirability of specific road access tools and controls, such as signs, gates, and physical impediments, and explores how these evaluations vary. The user characteristics considered include age, community of residence, use frequency, familiarity, environmental beliefs, and recreational activities pursued. The results provided varying degrees of evidence for the relationships between the user characteristics and satisfaction and management tool evaluations. However, although all user characteristics considered were shown to have some predictive ability, there was low support for all models and much variation was left unexplained for both satisfaction and management tool evaluations, suggesting that there remain other unidentified factors influencing these social dimensions of forestry road management.