Assessment of Artificial Reefs
Brock49 assessed a Hawaiian AR by looking at its financial gains alone, to investigate whether it was as profitable as the natural reefs. This is a useful tool as it provides an idea of the amount of people visiting an artificial reef compared to a natural reef. It also provides the value of a reef. In 1994 the profits for the AR were $20,000 dollars, compared to a profit of $278,000 from natural reefs. This profit however is from four natural reef sites compared to only one AR. Still this has shown that in this case, tourists value natural reefs much more highly than ARs. Although financial gains are a useful representative of value, they lack a large amount of information, as it does not indicate visitor satisfaction or give information about the site itself.
Questionnaires can be used to assess divers satisfaction of ARs and whether or not they think it is a suitable alternative to a natural reef. An earlier study looked at anglers and diver’s satisfaction of artificial reefs in Florida.51 This concentrated on fish abundance, accessibility and travel. They found that accessibility to the site was the most important factor to divers and that travel costs were also important. These results can be used …show more content…
Evidence from medical questionnaires has shown 10-20 minutes is a suitable amount of time for self-administered questionnaires to last.56 The mail surveys used by Ditton et al.6 were 11 pages long, this could also have contributed to the low response rate. Needham et al.39 had a four-paged survey that lasted approximately 15 minutes, with an 87% response rate and resulting in 2821 surveys. This would imply that this was an appropriate length for a survey, otherwise it is unlikely so many would have been
Brock49 assessed a Hawaiian AR by looking at its financial gains alone, to investigate whether it was as profitable as the natural reefs. This is a useful tool as it provides an idea of the amount of people visiting an artificial reef compared to a natural reef. It also provides the value of a reef. In 1994 the profits for the AR were $20,000 dollars, compared to a profit of $278,000 from natural reefs. This profit however is from four natural reef sites compared to only one AR. Still this has shown that in this case, tourists value natural reefs much more highly than ARs. Although financial gains are a useful representative of value, they lack a large amount of information, as it does not indicate visitor satisfaction or give information about the site itself.
Questionnaires can be used to assess divers satisfaction of ARs and whether or not they think it is a suitable alternative to a natural reef. An earlier study looked at anglers and diver’s satisfaction of artificial reefs in Florida.51 This concentrated on fish abundance, accessibility and travel. They found that accessibility to the site was the most important factor to divers and that travel costs were also important. These results can be used …show more content…
Evidence from medical questionnaires has shown 10-20 minutes is a suitable amount of time for self-administered questionnaires to last.56 The mail surveys used by Ditton et al.6 were 11 pages long, this could also have contributed to the low response rate. Needham et al.39 had a four-paged survey that lasted approximately 15 minutes, with an 87% response rate and resulting in 2821 surveys. This would imply that this was an appropriate length for a survey, otherwise it is unlikely so many would have been