Abstract
The cautious management of wilderness areas has been mandated by increased recreational use of these areas. A wilderness perception mapping (WPM) concept was developed to assess the spatial characteristics of the perceptions of wilderness held by recreationalists. WPM, which offers a technique to consider use pressures in the backcountry, is operationalized via identifying the dimensions of wilderness purism, classifying users, establishing the spatial criteria for each map aspect, establishing weightings, and generating a weighted overlay using a geographic information system. This methodology is applied to a case study of North West Nelson, on the South Island of New Zealand.