What do visitors think of peatlands?

New open-access paper from the WetFutures UK team 
One of the aims of the WetFutures project is to explore the different uses and perceptions of wetlands. Many wetland sites are also recreational landscapes, where people spend their leisure time, and sometimes tourist destinations. ​

Image: Information Board at Ilkley Moor (by Abbi Flint) 

In this paper Abbi and Ben from the WetFutures UK team explore visitor perceptions of three peatland sites in the UK (Shapwick Heath, Thorne and Hatfield Moors and Ilkley Moor) using qualitative analysis of reviews that visitors have posted online - on the popular travel site TripAdvisor. 

These online user-generated reviews are already well-used in tourism research and we feel that they offer great potential for understanding how people use and perceive heritage landscapes like peatlands. In our piece we were particularly interested in the role that cultural heritage played in these visitor narratives.  
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The article is published open-access, so you can read the full-text here: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021.1941198