Financing nature management in the United States - Entrance Fee conflicts and donation boxes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Abstract

This thesis uses a theoretical framework on conceptualizations of particular nature-society configurations to better understand how national parks in the United States have become a nation-identifying institution. Current management objectives have led an entire National Park System to be dependent on significant funding to continually produce particular wilderness and landscape in National Park Service managed park units. As congressional appropriations for park operational funds are insufficient and maintenance backlogs accumulate, understanding how single park units respond to lack of incomes is of interest, and this study seeks to qualitatively approach a single case. One of the key questions in this essay is thus how one national park, Great Smoky Mountains, have difficulties implementing an entrance fee, which has proved to be a vital source of additional revenue at other NPS units. By addressing this question, this study shows how debates over entrance fees on public recreational lands should be understood in historical and place-specific contexts, as archive findings indicate the present day outcome of a free-to-enter national park in the Smokies have roots that can be traced back to a pre-park era. As the park was founded on private rather than publicly owned land, land purchases by Tennessee and North Carolina, and subsequent transfers to the United States was integral to realize the project of forming a national park in the east. It was thus believed the citizens of the two Smoky states had paid enough of a price, and deeds were put in transfers to secure GSMNP would remain free of entrance fees and road tolls. In identifying factors contributing to the reproduction of GSMNP as a entrance fee- and toll free park, a further question is asked of how visiting tourists are targeted for donations to the national park. In-field participant observations of donation boxes and donation box signage were applied to analyze and advance understanding of how one national park partner organization requests donations from tourists, who thus contribute with direct financing of reproduction of wilderness and landscapes. These observations took place at four of the most visited locations in the park, and findings show how donation boxes and signage vary in design and formulations at different sights. Ranging from signage appeals to visitors to make donations to preserve the view and landscape immediately in front of them to creative multi-receptacle donation boxes in a visitor center playing on visitor state loyalty to attract donations for general management objectives.