Boater Behavior.

A stratified random sample of the boating population was selected from the boat census population; these individuals were contacted and information elicited by a telephone survey (1992-93). Boats were stratified according to boat type and geographic region in the bay, to ensure that all boat types and trafficsheds were adequately represented. A boat registration database was made available from the FDOT to identify owners of boats that had visible registration numbers. For boats that had no visible registration numbers, the street address where the boat was berthed was noted. The owner of the property was contacted, and requested to participate in the interview if s/he was the owner of the boat.

Potential interviewees were contacted by mail and informed that a researcher from the University of Florida was going to contact them by phone in the near future. A postcard was included with the letter with a request that the subject return it with consent to be called and indication of a time that they preferred to be interviewed. Potential subjects who did not respond to the mailed request were contacted by phone with a request to participate in the interview.

Subjects who consented to be interviewed were contacted by phone. A series of questions were asked regarding the kind of boat they owned (to check for consistency with the census data), how often the boat was taken out, under what weather conditions, typical length of trip, usual time of day for boating, and kinds of typical boating activities. All of these items were recorded into a database by the interviewer. The subject was then asked to describe a typical trip, which was entered in the database as free-form sentence. When ambiguous groups numbers were given (``I take the boat out for 2 or 3 hours...'') an attempt was made to reconcile the values to a single value (boat is taken out for 2.5 hours). This aspect of data entry allows for fractional input of trip times, and accounts for ``fractional trips'' that are observed in the data summaries in later parts of this study.

The interviewer also asked the subject to describe a typical trip in terms that would allow the interviewer to plot the trip route on a small-scale map. If the subject was willing, additional questions were asked regarding attitudes about signage, boating safety, and any other issue that the boater felt strongly about.

Since subjects had differing tolerances about how long they were willing to be interviewed and what questions they were willing to answer, it was necessary to prioritize which information was most important from each interview. If the subject was hesitant or pressed for time, then only information regarding how often the boat was taken out and typical destinations was gathered. Many subjects declined to give information about their age or occupation, while others terminated the interview before questions about attitudes and safety could be addressed. A total of 256 boaters, or about 5% of the resident population, was interviewed. Not all boaters answered all questions in the survey; one will note different totals on various summary statistics derived from these data.