Achtung Staatsgrenze?

The Bavarian Forest National Park and Šumava National Park are located in the Bavarian-Czech border area. These national parks form a cross-border protected area attracting locals, day visitors, and tourists; they come not only due to its ecology, but also due to its history and culture. Against the background of increasing visitor numbers, protected area management faces the challenging task of preserving biodiversity as well as enabling high-quality recreational use in the parks. To identify potential conflicts between nature conservation and recreational use, and to gain in-depth knowledge about the visitors in the national parks, joint cross-border socioeconomic monitoring (SÖM) was implemented. One of the SÖM work packages focuses on visitors undertaking cross-border recreational activities. This paper presents the main results of this work package, based on a visitor survey and census. First, it points out the socio-demographic characteristics, motivation, and satisfaction of this specific visitor group. Second, it analyses the socio-temporal patterns of cross-border recreational use in the transboundary protected area. Finally, the results indicate the great importance of cross-border recreational use, as well as the heterogeneity of visitors crossing the border in terms of their origin, language skills, and activities. Based on these findings, practical recommendations for coordinated cross-border visitor management are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]