Protected area age, visitation-service concessions, species richness, and accessibility drive visitation in Brazilian protected areas

Abstract

Protected areas (PAs) are central to biodiversity conservation, yet the factors that determine why some PAs attract more visitors than others remain poorly understood in Brazil. In particular, the relative roles of biodiversity, geographic and socioeconomic context remain understudied at the national scale. Here, we evaluate how geographic (protected area size), accessibility (population density of nearby municipalities), institutional (year of creation and visitation-service concessions), and biodiversity factors (species richness of birds, mammals, and plants) drive tourist visitation across 320 federal protected areas. Using mixed-effects models, we found that visitation increases with bird and mammal richness, population density of nearby municipalities, and the presence of a visitation-service concession, while plant richness and PA size showed no significant effect. Older protected areas also received more visitors. These results reveal that charismatic fauna, urban proximity, and management arrangements strongly influence public use of PAs in Brazil. By identifying the attributes that most strongly attract visitors, our study provides evidence to support data-driven visitation policies and public use planning that balance tourism demand with biodiversity conservation.