An investigation of outdoor recreational users' willingness to participate in aquatic invasive plant control

Aquatic invasive plants (AIP) can have major ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Effective management is therefore essential. Because many biological invasions occur in places used for outdoor recreation, recreational user engagement is widely advocated. However, few studies have been conducted on recreational user engagement in biological control, and those that exist have placed surprisingly little emphasis on several predictors used in the field of outdoor studies. This study explored the factors influencing recreational users' willingness to participate in the control of AIP at a freshwater lake in south-western France. Five actions were proposed (i.e. changing the way one uses the lake, informing others about the plants, being part of a manual removal collective, sending information to a participative citizen observatory, giving money). In a first step, I demonstrated that the proportion of the individuals' responses on the five willingness to engage is statistically different. In a second step, I estimated binomial regressions to model willingness to participate in the various management actions. Predictors drawn from the invasion sciences and outdoor research studies were included. Recreational factors were highly significant in predicting willingness to participate. Good knowledge of the invasive plants and participation in water-based activities were also strong positive incentives to participate. The influences of perceived impacts (both positive and negative) and education were ambivalent. The study confirms that not all forms of participation in the control of biological invasion are considered of equal value. To increase the scale of community-based management, it is therefore important to define precisely what is being asked of the recreational user.