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BACKGROUND [Back to top]
In 1987, The University of Idaho, in cooperation with the Idaho Department of Commerce and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation conducted the state's first comprehensive statewide study of leisure travel and recreation. That study represented the beginning of an effort to establish a travel and tourism research agenda at the University of Idaho for acquiring, maintaining and analyzing an ongoing data base for Idaho's tourism industry and recreation managers. Its purpose was to provide the government agencies, recreation, tourism and community leaders, transportation planners, land managers, and others with data and information for tourism planning, development, marketing, and management.
The 1987 study focused on a year-round study of leisure travel throughout the state of Idaho. It used a highway intercept method on a stratified sample of all interstate, federal and state highways. The study measured and described the characteristics and behaviors of motor vehicle travelers statewide and in each of the seven travel regions. It determined who Idaho's leisure motor vehicle travelers were, what they did while traveling, and how they made travel decisions. The characteristics of tourist attractions and the nature of leisure tourist expenditures were also assessed.
In the ensuing years, considerable change occurred in travel and recreation in Idaho. Growth was relatively dramatic. New and expanded travel products emerged. Motor vehicle travelers representing new markets began to visit Idaho.
Concurrent with these changes was a growing recognition that the 1987 study, while comprehensive and highly effective in describing leisure travel, had not examined business, convention and meeting, and other non-leisure travel. Anecdotal information suggested that this segment of the travel phenomenon could be very large. These conditions stimulated the need to revisit and expand the 1987 study.
Consequently, in 1993, the University of Idaho, Department of Resource Recreation and Tourism working in partnership with Idaho Department of Commerce, Idaho Transportation Department, Idaho State Police, Idaho Travel Council, Idaho Travel Regions, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, U.S.D.I. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S.D.I. Bureau of Land Management, the Boise Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation replicated a redesigned version of 1987 Idaho Leisure Travel and Recreation Study.
After meetings and communications held with tourism, recreation, travel and planning leaders in the state, it was clear that present day information needs are extensive and diverse. It was also clear that fulfilling these needs would require financial and human resources far exceeding those available or dedicated to research by any single funding entity in the state.
It was also evident that to continue meeting Idaho's tourism, recreation, travel and planning information needs it is necessary to create an ongoing system or program which would undertake a continuous series of financially affordable, logistically feasible, and scientifically defensible research projects which, over time, would fit together to fulfill the needs of an expanded travel and tourism partnership. In other words, these would be interrelated components that combine to provide a complete or "Big Picture" of travel and tourism in Idaho. This effort would be designed to replicate project components at periodic intervals to eventually provide trend data. In addition, methods would be developed to estimate levels of activity or currency in those components not being intensively examined during intervening periods when resources and attention were being devoted to the other components.
Consequently these data gathering, analysis and reporting efforts have become partnerships between the University and many federal and state entities. Data collection has included the targeting of information specific to individual markets or agencies. For example both the 1987 and 1993 studies included detailed assessments by travelers of the condition of Idaho travel facilities and services. In 1993, data were gathered on the bicycling needs and behaviors of residents and nonresidents. In addition, data on traveler assessment of safety rest areas and information needs were collected.
GOALS OF THE PROPOSED 1999-2000 STUDY [Back to top]
The purpose of the 1999 Idaho Resident and Nonresident Motor Vehicle Travel Study is to continue the collection and analysis of data on the primary market/user group: the resident and nonresident personal motor vehicle traveler in Idaho.
The goals of this cooperative research are:
- To provide practical data on nonresident motor vehicle travelers in Idaho, including: party characteristics, trip characteristics, recreation activity characteristics, locational data, economic data, psychographic profile, traveler opinions and preferences on Idaho tourism and recreation services, needs and assessment of traveler signage, facility and safety.
- To provide practical tourism information for use in transportation planning—motor vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian tourist travel—(Idaho Transportation Department and local governments), development of local comprehensive plans (city and county governments), development of scenic byway corridor management plans (ITD and the Idaho Scenic Byways Advisory Committee and partners), rural tourism development planing (Idaho Department of Commerce and local governments), and Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation and Tourism Plans (Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation).
- To continue trend analysis capabilities through periodic data collection over multiple travel quarters every five to seven years.
- To create a database that is compatible with the 1987 and 1993 studies and future studies of the other primary market/user groups.
- To disseminate the findings, share the statistical databases, and communicate the implications of the study by electronic and other means so that the widest possible array of users can benefit from these data in a timely and efficient manner.
- To provide scientifically defensible data at a state and tourism region levels. The intent is to have as many of the variables as feasible reportable at the regional level and wherever possible, as per limits of sampling, report information at a destination level.
METHODS IN BRIEF
Population [Back to top]
All resident and nonresident motor vehicle travelers in Idaho for a 12 month period June or July 1999 until May or June of 2000. Starting date is dependent upon the approval of the contract and creation of necessary materials. Examples of likely quarters to be used are as follows:
Summer - June, July, August
Fall - September, October, November
Winter - December, January, February
Spring - March, April, May
Approach [Back to top]
The most efficient method of studying resident and nonresident motor vehicle travel to and within Idaho is to treat the state as a model, or closed unit, and using a methodology by which information can be obtained on every traveler (or sample of travelers) in the state. To assure a minimum of bias, it is critical that nearly everyone who travels in the state has an equal (or known) chance of being sampled.
In the case of motor vehicle travelers, the contact locations should be on roads/highways where the traveler enters or traverses the state. The highway intercept method will be used at two types of locations: 1) a sample of highways entering the state, and 2) a sample of highways internal to each travel region in Idaho. The first will provide an opportunity to sample primarily nonresidents entering or leaving the state, and the second will allow a sampling of intra-state travel, predominantly by residents.
Sampling [Back to top]
Each site will be sampled several times a month for a three-hour period. These sampling periods will be randomly assigned so as to cover time periods throughout the daylight hours. A flag person will direct all commercial (e.g., semi-trailer trucks, delivery vehicles, government vehicles) around the survey site. All other motor vehicles (or a sample of motor vehicles, when traffic volumes are high) will be waved into the survey site. Due to the size of some of the highway pullouts used as survey sites, no more than 3 or 4 vehicles can be accommodated at any given time. In these cases, the flag person would wave on motor vehicles until more space is available at the survey site. In this way, random selection can be maintained when conditions do not allow for sampling all motor vehicle travelers. At these sites, a count of all traffic and of all motor vehicle traffic will be kept for the three-hour sample period. These counts will later be used, in conjunction with monthly average daily traffic flow data, to weight returned surveys for analysis and to determine the total number of nonresident and resident motor vehicle travelers in Idaho each season.
A second approach to stopping motor vehicles may be necessary for some Interstate highway sites where the traffic volume is too large to be controlled by a flag person. In these cases extra road signs will be used to inform the motor vehicle travelers that a tourism survey was ahead, that all vehicles should keep in the right lane, a second reminder that a tourism survey was ahead, and a request for them to pull into the rest area where the survey site will be located. The ratio of nonresident to resident traffic can be calculated from the counts. Those ratios coupled with the Idaho Transportation Department's ADT counts will permit estimates of the total number of nonresident travel parties that visit Idaho during each quarter.
Target sample size [Back to top]
Our target is to contact approximately 1000-1500 persons per region (7) per season (4) or approximately 28,000- 42,000 vehicles total over the year. Of these, we are estimating 50% will return their dairies. Therefore we will have approximately 2000-3000 completed interviews per region or approximately 500-750 per season. These targets are used to guide the estimation of interview costs and materials. Should additional funds be identified these numbers would be adapted. The total numbers are likely to impact our ability to talk about destinations within regions. Based upon the 1993 nonresident travel study it is likely that approximately twice as much time will need to be spent sampling in Travel Regions 2 and 7 and about 1/2 as much time in Region 1 as will need to be spent in Regions 3, 4, 5, and 6.
The Survey Instruments [Back to top]
Once a traveler is pulled into the survey site, the study will be briefly introduced and the traveler asked a series of short questions regarding their destination(s), purpose of trip, familiarity with the area in which they were traveling, party size, vehicle type, place of residence, places that they were going to visit in Idaho, and their anticipated total number of nights in Idaho. This information comprises the front-end Interview and will be administered to occupants of all vehicles that are stopped.
Once the front-end Interview is complete, a randomly selected occupant of each vehicle will given a Mail-back Diary Questionnaire to take with them and complete as they traveled through Idaho. The Mail-back Questionnaire asks some of the same questions as the front-end Interview, as well as questions regarding traveler characteristics, trip characteristics, opinions on Idaho's tourism and recreation services, opinions on highway rest areas, travel mode, evaluations of traveler facilities and services, travel behavior and psychographic (marketing) information, and a trip diary section designed for the traveler to keep a log of their travel expenditures and activities while in Idaho.
The interview and questionnaire are designed to be easily modified from quarter to quarter, or even for each region of the state. This allows additional questions to be added or removed to address specific issues as they come up throughout the course of this study.
Data Analysis [Back to top]
Data from the questionnaire will be entered at the office of the Department of Resource Recreation and Tourism in the University of Idaho. SPSS-DE will be used as the data entry tool. Data entry will be checked for accuracy by the principal investigators of this project. Corrections will be made where errors were found. Data files will be maintained in ASCII and SPSS format on IBM PC compatible hard drives and on floppy disks. In order to avoid bias that could result because we are not able to interview all potential respondents that pass by our sample point during the sample period, variables will be weighted to make the responses representative of the proportions of the traffic actually flowing through the sampling sites.
Analysis will be performed on the interview and questionnaire data using SPSS for Windows. Basic descriptive statistics, frequency distributions and cross tabulations will be computed for all variables of interest.
Dissemination of Results [Back to top]
Copy ready findings (one) will be made available to the Department of Commerce. In addition, and contingent on full project support, statewide and regional findings and databases will be placed on the World Wide Web (PDF Files). The final part of dissemination is to offer training programs targeted at local planners, managers and tourism operators to train them in how to access and use the databases for decisions concerning marketing, traveler facility design and development, social impact assessment, and rural tourism planning. We are still seeking grant money to carry out this training component.
Research Tasks [Back to top]
1. Begin procedures to hire needed professionals -- Two project field directors each who is responsible for a highway sampling team. Three additional highway sampling team members who will do on-site sampling and during their down time in Moscow enter data. One 12 month (social science marketing data analyst) and one six month master’s student (engineering data analyst).
2. Select Highway Sampling Locations -- Convene a meeting of ITD, the Idaho State Patrol and members from the Idaho Department of Commerce in Boise to identify sites based upon the sampling stratification needs to be representative, meeting the traffic safety needs and their ability to handle the intercept sampling station. Furthermore, identify sites for sampling commercial trucks. Prior to the meeting use the ground counts and GIS data assembled at the University to identify likely/potential sites.
3. Develop final sampling plan -- Once locations are identified then the final sampling plan can be built. Dates, locations and interviewers will be assigned. Determine if a separate plan will be needed for commercial trucks.
4. Develop project web site and page as a way to keep all partners informed and up to date with the progress of the project.
5. Design survey instruments -- Based upon input from members of the travel regions, in conjunction with previous studies, and with input from the marketing staff finalize the survey research instruments. In particular, work with our engineering counterparts at the University to insure their required variables are adequately included. If necessary design a specific questionnaire for commercial trucks.
6. Meet with representatives from the Travel Regions -- Share the final draft questionnaires and get their reactions and suggestions. In particular, have them focus on their special set of questions for the region.
7. Pre-test survey instruments -- Develop prototype questionnaires and pre-test them with travelers and members of the general public. Identify problems with instructions, measurements and any other aspect of survey administration.
8. Finalize survey instruments and procedures -- Finalize changes, get questionnaires, post cards letters etc. printed.
9. Identify and train highway survey crews -- Positions will be advertised to attract persons with previous survey research experience or training. Our goal is to identify personnel who are outgoing, congenial and find it enjoyable to interact with the public. These persons need to be outstanding hosts. Training will be conducted by the principle investigators and include: (1) the instrument; (2) how to address travelers; (3) how to deal with locals; (4) protocol and procedures to follow when interviewing; and (5) training from ITD on safety/road and signage requirements.
10. Acquire needed signage -- We hope to get this from ITD as has been the case in the past.
11. Implement sampling plan and collect data over a 12 month time period. This includes on-site data collection (counting of vehicles, interview, distribution of questionnaires), implementing the follow-up postcard and where necessary a follow-up letter and additional questionnaire via mail. Our standardized procedures are part of our program to enhance the response rate.
12. Develop quarterly data reports and place information on the web page, and transmit the traffic engineering and related data to our co-investigators. Data encoding will be done using SPSS and the entire data base will be designed so that it is easily transportable between analysis programs. Data analysis will involve the use of SPSS, GIS and QSR NUDIST 4. These three packages allow us to analyze the quantitative, qualitative and geographic data that we will be collecting. Pilot traffic modeling to ensure appropriate data is being collected.
13. Revise, if necessary any questions or procedures based upon our analysis of the first quarter’s data. This involves reviewing findings from the travel and tourism section as well as the transportation section necessary for the traffic modeling component of the study.
14. Develop final project documentation. This will consist of a series of reports as well as a computer data base. The data base is being designed so that it can be accessed via the web. Copy ready documents will be provided to the funding partners.
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