So little time was required to register that perhaps those unwilling to take the 

 time didn't understand the importance of registering. 



The field interviewers were convinced that at least a majority of the people who 

 said they planned to register when leaving were telling the truth, rather than ration- 

 alizing. If this is the case, then the registration rates reported above might be 

 consistently 2 or 3 percentage points low. 



The people who said they did not see the box (5 percent) were also probably truth- 

 ful. We watched several people, usually bent over with heavy packs, walk within 5 feet 

 of the registration station without seeming to notice it at all. 



Comparison With Results of Previous Studies 



Many of our findings can be compared quite directly to those reported by Wenger 

 and Gregersen (1964) (see table 2). Very few comparisons with the results reported by 

 Thorsell (1968) are possible, except for those dealing with registration rates (about 

 twice as high in the Mission Mountains Primitive Area) and variations in such rates 

 from trail to trail, (which were less in our study). Comparisons are important because 

 they suggest the degree to which the same factors influence registrations in the same 

 ways in different wildernesses, and they indicate whether the same use-estimating for- 

 mula could be applied in different areas. 



Although Wenger and Gregersen did not publish confidence intervals for their 

 estimates, it seems unlikely that the difference between the overall registration rates 

 in the Oregon study and in our study is statistically significant. The information 

 visitors provided as to their addresses, times of entry and departure, and group sizes 

 was slightly more complete in our study than that reported in the Oregon study. 



Most factors seem to influence registration rates in the Oregon study as well as 

 in our study, although usually to a lesser degree in our study. However, the effects 

 of two factors--fishing and the time of the week--were reversed. Unfortunately, the 

 fishing classification was the one factor that was not defined in the same way in the 

 two studies. In Oregon, visitor groups were classified as "fishermen" only if the 

 specific purpose of the trip was fishing for the entire group. In Montana, they were 

 Classified as "fishermen" if some of the group fished or planned to fish. 



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