RRC is currently leading the movement into the 4th year of the National Park Service’s nationwide socioeconomic monitoring study (SEM) of visitors to National Parks. A first-of-its-kind project, the SEM aims to capture a representative sample of all NPS visitors across the country. Each season, research teams at 24–30 parks collect data that supports calculations of national visitor spending, demographics, trip characteristics, and special topics such as park access.

Between 2022 and 2024, our surveyors contacted over 70,000 respondents across nearly 100 parks. RRC compiles data from each park into both park-specific and national-level reports, published on the NPS’s Integrated Resource Management Applications Portal. Additionally, data from RRC’s SEM reports feeds into the NPS’s Visitor Spending Effects Models which detail the NPS’s economic contributions to the national, state, and park-level economies in terms of visitor spending, employment, labor income, value added, and economic output.

Our collaboration with the National Park Service exemplifies our trusted expertise to conduct large socioeconomic studies that investigate the impacts and sentiments of travel, tourism, and outdoor recreation. We have further worked over the last four years to refine and improve opportunities for the NPS to better understand the variation in spending behavior between local visitors and those on more extended travels. Our trained survey teams collect data by working directly with visitors to quickly and accurately describe their travels in a way that is both precise and minimally burdensome.