Nationalparkernas attraktivitet : En studie om besöksvariationen i svenska nationalparker

Sammanfattning: Protected areas such as national parks are an important part of nature-based tourism all over the world. Over the past years there have been an increase of visitors to Sweden’s 30 national parks. Most of the visitors are domestic, however about 7% of the international tourist travel to Sweden in the purpose of visiting a national park. The aim of this thesis is to examine different factors that potentially could impact the visitor numbers. Factors such as availability for disabled, transport modes, population and visitor centers. Furthermore, the presence of certain elements is compared in a qualitative analysis. According to the results the presence of a visitor center, naturum, have a positive impact on the number of visitors. As well as national parks established after 1960. During the 1960s grater investments were made to make nature accessible for everyone. This thesis shows that there is a connection between high visitor numbers and easily accessible national parks, which could be a result of the change in the 1960s. At the same time, the most inaccessible national parks have seen an increase of visitors over the past years.