The tremendous growth in the Australian tourist industry in recent years poses a significant threat to rock art sites in many parts of the continent. Rock art faces unprecedented conservation problems associated with the rapid increase in the number of visitors, and the author was requested by the Joint Academies' Committee for the Preservation of Prehistoric Places to conduct a major study of visitor behavior. This covered two localities in Northern Territory, the Kakadu site complex and Ayers Rock. With hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, these sites are among the most threatened in Australia. The lack of previous research on this topic necessitated the development of an experimental methodology initially. The paper describes this process, and the evolution of an objective-oriented research design. A general discussion of preliminary results is provided.