Structural effects in national parkgoing

Abstract

Studies of outdoor recreation commonly mobilize “individual‐level” variables, such as personal characteristics (e.g., age, sex, socioeconomic status), personality, psychological needs, life experiences, and attitudes in testing for explanations of different participation styles. Seldom is attention directed to the explanatory importance for these studies of “system‐level” or contextual variables, such as structural and cultural patterns. Structural‐effects analysis is used in this exploratory study to test the importance of a system‐level variable (social‐class structure) for the relationship between two individual‐level variables, socioeconomic status and national parkgoing. Several status variables were found to be positively associated with the frequency of the respondents’ national parkgoing. But more importantly, these relationships were materially affected by the class structures of the respondents’ home communities. Working‐class persons in a predominately middle‐class population displayed significantly higher rates of parkgoing than their class counterparts in a predominately working‐class population. Conversely, the parkgoing rates of middle‐class persons were lowered by their residence in a predominately working‐class population. These findings suggest the utility of integrating system‐level (contextual) variables and individual‐level variables in explanatory models of recreational participation.

Key words:

• outdoor recreation
• leisure
• national parks
• socioeconomic status
• social class