Context
In order to limit the degradation of the Calanque de Sugiton, a quota measure will be implemented on an experimental basis during the summer of 2022. During the Board of Directors of the Parc National des Calanques which took place on July 13, 2021, a regulation for pedestrian access, traffic and parking in the Calanque de Sugiton has been voted. During the period of application of this measure, visitors must obtain a free personal visit permit, valid for the day and time slot in question, which they must present in the event of an inspection. The obtaining of the permit of visit will be done under reservation. Thus, the number of people in this calanque will be limited to a maximum of 400 people per day.
Project
Firstly, I take interest in knowing the opinion of the users vis-à-vis this visit permit since it was not considered during the vote of the board of directors of the National Park of the Calanques .
It is interesting to see if the fact of being for or against the measure, would push users to respect or not the nominative visit permit. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see if the attachment of users to this calanque and their conviction that the permit will limit the degradation of this calanque, would exert an influence on their adherence to the nominative visit permit or not.
And in a second step, I would try to answer the question:
Will the visit permit be effective?
Approach
As part of this project, I established a questionnaire (Figures 1.1 and 1.2) and I went to the Calanques National Park to interview the users of the Calanque de Sugiton. I interviewed 123 individuals.
Figure 1.1. Survey part 1.
Figure 1.2. Survey part 2.
Process
At the end of this questionnaire, I obtained a database from which I obtained graphs and Khi 2 tests relating pairs of questions to validate or invalidate my hypotheses.
Graph 1. Bar chart of question 8.
Graph 2. Pie chart of question 14.
Graph 3. Pie chart of question 15.
This contingency measure being a new measure introduced in France, it is interesting to see how the press reports this news because the latter plays an important role in informing and influencing the public. This will allow us to see how the population receives the information and if it is communicated correctly. I was able to obtain a word cloud from the titles of 26 online press articles, by searching with keywords and hashtags such as #sugiton #permis #calanques on the internet, over the first two weeks of April, i.e. period 01-15 April 2022.
Figure 2. Entry permit wordcloud
We observe that the words that come up the most are: visit permit, reserve, visit, park, first time, access, experienced, reservation… The quota measure I am talking about in this file constitutes a significant part of this cloud of word. This proves that the local regional and national press, as well as press specializing in environmental and tourism themes, highlight in their recent articles this measure which will be tested by the Calanques National Park in the Calanque de Sugiton for the first times in France.
Will the visit permit be effective?
Map of the access roads leading to the Calanque de Sugiton
Figure 3. Map of the access roads leading to the Calanque de Sugiton.
According to the information I was able to obtain, the control of the nominative visit permit will take place at the intersection of the trails, that is the light green path plus the blue path in the map. The objective of this map is to show the ease of access to the Calanque de Sugiton and therefore the ease of avoiding control.
Results
I observed the relationship between users’ attachment to the calanque that I was able to obtain from question 8: “the Calanque of Sugiton matters a lot to me” of the established questionnaire, and their adherence to the permit that we obtained from question 14.
The results obtained from the Chi 2; the observed Chi 2 being lower than the theoretical Chi 2, do not allow me to validate the first hypothesis. Thus, the users who are attached to the calanque are not necessarily those who are most likely to be for the nominative visit permit.
On the other hand, my second hypothesis is validated, users who believe that the visit permit will limit the degradation of the creek are the most likely to be for the contingency measure. There is indeed a relationship between the conviction of users that the nominative visit permit will limit the degradation of the creek and the adherence of users to it. (Chi 2 of the relationship established from question 14 and question 15).
Regarding the effectiveness of the control, assuming therefore that the control of the nominative visit permit will take place at the intersection of the paths. There are a total of 7 alternative paths to access the Calanque de Sugiton:
- 4 from Luminy by taking the B1 or 24 bus
- 2 from Carpiagne Gineste by taking the M08 bus (direction Cassis)
- 1 from Les Baumettes which can be done either by car or by taking bus 22 to the terminus to get to the Calanque de Morgiou.
It would therefore not be very effective beforehand.