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  ENN 21 Jun 06
Americans Prefer Video to National Parks, Study Finds
By Jon Hurdle, Reuters

EurekAlert 9 May 06
Nature vs Nintendo: Video games or national parks
University of Illinois at Chicago

Are future national park trips for America's youth likely to be on-line virtual experiences rather than the real thing?

A University of Illinois at Chicago ecologist says there may be cause for concern. Oliver Pergams, research assistant professor in biological sciences at UIC, reports in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Environmental Management that a rise in at-home entertainment activity, such as playing video games and surfing the Internet, corresponds with a decline, in per capita terms, in visits to U.S. national parks.

Rising oil prices showed a strong association as well. The turnaround began in 1988 after a steady, half-century rise in park visits.

Pergams, a former commodities trader with a longtime interest in macroeconomics and international finance, used Statistical Abstracts data and special data acquired from Mediamark Research to conduct his study, using rank-order correlation and multilinear regression analytical tools.

"Many of the variables were highly significantly correlated with this decline in national park visitation," said Pergams. "Multilinear regression apportions which variables are the most significant in affecting the outcome."

While more than two dozen variables were tested, Pergams said video games, home movie rentals, going out to movies, Internet use, and rising fuel prices explained almost 98 percent of the decline.

"It's fairly stunning," he said, but cautions that correlation is not the same as causation.

"This is no smoking gun," Pergams said. "We're showing statistically that the rise in use of these various types of media, as well as oil prices, is so highly correlated with the decline in national park visits that there is likely to be some association."

Pergams ruled out variables such as family income, age, the recent rise in foreign travel, or crowding in the parks as major factors. These variables were tested and shown not to correlate nearly as strongly as home entertainment and fuel prices.

"My concern is that young people are simply not going outdoors or to natural areas, but are instead playing video games, going on the Internet or watching movies," Pergams said. "My longer-term concern is that I don't see how this trend, if it is in fact true, could be good for conservation efforts. But if the trends are correct, perhaps public awareness will lead to some solutions."

Patricia Zaradic, a conservation biologist with the Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale, Pa., co-authored the paper.

ENN 21 Jun 06
Americans Prefer Video to National Parks, Study Finds
By Jon Hurdle, Reuters

PHILADELPHIA — Americans are less interested in spending time in natural surroundings like national parks because they are spending more time watching television, playing video games and surfing the Internet, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study, for The Nature Conservancy, found per-capita visits to national parks have been declining for years. National park visitation data starting in 1930 peaked in 1987 at 1.2 visits per person per year. But by 2003 it had declined by about 25 percent to 0.9 visits per person per year, said Oliver Pergams, an ecologist at the University of Illinois who analyzed the data for the study. The data, based on government statistics and other sources, were taken as a proxy for interest in nature in general.

Researchers tested more than two dozen possible explanations for the trend and found that 98 percent of the drop in national park visits was explained by video games, movie rentals, going out to movies, Internet use and rising fuel prices. Other possible explanations such as family income or the aging population were ruled out.

There was a sufficiently high correlation between declining national park visits and the burgeoning use of electronic media that led Pergams and his associate, Patricia Zaradic, believe the two are linked. "It made us feel fairly certain that there is an association," Pergams told Reuters. The study, to be published in the Journal of Environmental Management, concludes that the trend has negative implications for environmental stewardship.

"We may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from people's appreciation of nature to 'videophilia' which we here define as the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media," the researchers said. "Such a shift would not bode well for the future of biodiversity conservation."

Nature Conservancy President Steve McCormick said the study suggests Americans and their children in particular are losing their connection to the natural world. "When children choose TVs over trees, they lose touch with the physical world outside and the fundamental connection of those places to our daily lives," McCormick said.
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