Choosing to encourage or discourage: Perceived effectiveness of prescriptive versus proscriptive messages

The estimated cost of repairing damage caused to recreational sites annuall y is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. These depreciative activities also reduce the quality of visitors' experiences in the damaged areas. Indi rect methods, such as visitor education through brochures and signs, contin ue to be the least controversial management approaches to depreciative acts . Yet, the literature on studies examining the most effective message prese ntations remains sparse. A survey mailed to randomly selected National Asso ciation for Interpretation members assessed the perceived effectiveness of communications that encouraged positive conduct (prescriptive messages) ver sus those that discouraged negative conduct (proscriptive messages) in wild land and urban settings. Almost invariably, respondents viewed the encourag ement based prescriptive messages as more effective than the discouragement -based proscriptive messages. This finding stands in sharp contrast to an e arlier study that discovered a preponderance of proscriptive versus prescri ptive messages on signs in both wildland and urban recreational environment s. Thus, although the great majority of interpreters see the encouragement of positive conduct as more effective, in practice, messages on signs are m uch more likely to discourage negative conduct. Reasons for this discrepanc y are considered.