This study focused on the recreation preferences of adolescents for certain riverscape characteristics. The study involved 281 students from four schools in Austria serving communities next to large rivers. A stated choice survey was used to collect data. The students were shown 16 riverscape scenarios divided into four choice sets. The students indicated which of the scenarios they perceived as being best for recreation and which worst. The riverscape scenarios depicted differing physical and social characteristics.
Additional information was collected about students' socio-demographics, past experience with rivers during childhood, river recreation use, attitudes towards rivers, knowledge about river ecology and river landscape perceptions. The average age of the respondents was 15 years, and approximately 75% were male. On average, the students had access to a river within 25 minutes walking distance from their homes, and almost 5% belonged to a nature or environmental protection association.
Findings indicated that about one fourth of the students had not spent time at a river during the last year and that the closer they lived to a river, the less often they went there to meet friends. Overall, students had rather positive attitudes towards and perceptions of natural rivers; yet quite a few of them perceived a river as useless wilderness.
This study also found that preferences for specific physical conditions are coupled with preferences for specific social ones. Students who preferred the more natural conditions also preferred settings with low human impact. The authors refer to these students as "nature-seekers." Other students, however, showed some dislike of natural conditions (such as decaying trees along the bank and deadwood in the water) and liked settings with more human impact (such as reinforced banks and benches along the trail). The authors refer to these students as "tolerant of human impact." Students showing some dislike for natural conditions had less experience with rivers and scored lower on natural river-related attitudes and perceptions. Having more experience with rivers was related to having more positive attitudes about natural rivers.
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