Analysis of Persistence and Change in Apostle Island Boating 1975-1977
Thomas Heberlein
The Apostle Islands region of Lake Superior has been a popular recreational boating site for many years, but the numbers of boaters and their characteristics are constantly evolving. These changes affect northern Wisconsin’s natural and economic environments.
A group of boaters in the Apostle Islands were surveyed in 1975 to learn what factors influenced their participation in recreational boating. They were surveyed again in 1985 and in 1997. Another group was surveyed in 1985 and in 1997, and a third group was surveyed only in 1997. Researchers are analyzing these three complex data sets and are collecting the secondary data necessary to help interpret observed changes.
As one of few long-term panel studies in the recreation research field, this project provides information about how people’s recreational lives change as they age, reveals changes in how society regards and uses wilderness, and shows how recreational boaters have affected the Apostle Islands area and how that area has responded to suit the boating population.
Understanding the recreational choices made by this aging population will reveal what individual, societal, and site-related factors affect people’s decision-making processes. These findings will help policy-makers, resource managers, business owners, and the public make informed decisions related to recreational and economic development in northern Wisconsin.
Update - February 1999
Data on boater behavior and perceptions have been collected, creating a database spanning 23 years, and an assessment of how boating tourism has influenced communities along Lake Superior’s southern shore is now underway. Since 1975, information has been obtained on marina development, ice and gas sales, yacht club membership trends, and growth of the area’s charter sailing fleet.
Preliminary analysis reveals several interesting trends:
• There are more visitors to the Apostle Islands now, but they feel less crowded than the 1985 visitors.
• The average age of Apostle Islands boaters has risen, but members of the baby boom generation constituted a smaller proportion of total visitors than expected.
• Boaters increasingly agree that the Apostle Islands are affected by humans and that the environment is damaged by overuse; yet their willingness to characterize the islands as a wilderness has remained constant.
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