Outdoor Recreation Trends

This book focuses on the issues and trends in outdoor, 'nature-based' recreation, leisure and tourism and explores the implications for public policy, planning, management and marketing. It is intended as supplementary reading for advanced students and is a useful reference tool.

This publication presents a national study of outdoor recreation trends as part of the 2010 Renewable Resources Planning Act Assessment by the Forest Service, U S Department of Agriculture The objectives are to review past trends in outdoor recreation participation by Americans, to describe in detail current outdoor recreation participation patterns, and to compare patterns across regional and demographic strata Further objectives include describing recreation activity participation on public and private lands and providing projections of outdoor recreation participation out to the year 2060 One overriding national trend is quite evident: the mix of outdoor activities chosen by Americans and the relative popularity of activities overall have been evolving over the last several decades One general category of activity that has been showing growth in the first decade of the 21st century is nature-based recreation Between 2000 and 2009, the number of people who participated in nature-based outdoor recreation grew by 71 percent and the number of activity days grew about 40 percent

The overall focus, scope, and purpose of this Special Issue on outdoor adventure is to provide the current and anticipated future trends, offer innovative ideas for new programs, support decision making for managers to move plans and intentions into action, inspire pioneering staff training and leadership development, incite policy reviews and revisions, promote resource (re)allocation where needed, and stimulate culture shifts among outdoor leaders and managers. Furthermore, this Special Issue is situated within the existing literature by depicting major trends in the field, exploring organizational issues and successes, identifying gaps between research and practice, and formulating solutions to some of the field’s most pressing challenges. Of particular interest were manuscripts reporting the following: • Adventure education across diverse cultures; • Innovative partnerships for experiential education outdoors; • Land management agencies working with adventure education programs; • Leadership and/or management issues and challenges; • Programming advances, participation trends; • Recruitment and retention of diverse staff, workforce enhancement; • Social groups/identity and outdoor spaces (e.g., people of color and outdoor adventure; women in the outdoors—where have we been, where are we going?; LGBTQ trends and future directions; youth and outdoor adventure); • Socioeconomic factors and solutions; • Technology influences and adventure education; • Working with schools/school districts and being in sync with curriculum needs, supporting transportation challenges, etc.