USDA Forest Service

Figure 1. Common depreciative environmental behaviors include littering and defacing natural objects with graffiti.

Depreciative behaviors and other undesirable recreationist actions continue to be a topic of great interest for recreation management (fig. 1, above). Maintaining park ecosystems involves responding to and preventing damage from depreciative recreationist behavior, and recreation managers are charged with developing and selecting effective tools to address the costly and perplexing impacts of undesirable recreationist behavior.

This article describes the Environmental Intervention Handbook for Resource Managers (EIH), a tool we designed to help managers modify depreciative recreationist behavior. The handbook is based on a model of pro-environmental behavior change derived from social science research. It provides “treatments” of depreciative behavior following a “diagnosis” of the barriers to the desired behavior. We use the term “pro-environmental behavior” to refer to those behaviors that promote environmental sustainability and do not contribute to environmental degradation. The handbook is self-guided and draws from the expertise of managers in their own settings. It provides guidelines, checklists, and worksheets for barrier identification and intervention design.

The Environmental Intervention Handbook for Resource Managers … provides “treatments” of depreciative [recreationist] behavior following a “diagnosis” of the barriers to the desired behavior.