Privacy and camping: Closeness to the self vs. closeness to others

Abstract

The “opportunities for solitude” provision of the Wilderness Act of 1964 has led to an interest in privacy by researchers and managers to determine carrying capacities for some types of areas. This study, following the theoretical approach of Altman, attempts to operationalize privacy to determine the extent to which privacy attitudes motivate wilderness use. By applying a set of privacy attitude scales, this comparison of car campers and backpackers shows that a lifestyle predisposition for privacy with units larger than one (e.g., with intimate friends or family), rather than being alone, is the meaning of solitude best predicting backcountry use. Implications suggested by our findings include (1) that managers should be scattering backpackers rather than clustering them at designated sites and (2) that leisure theory should look more to general social and psychological theory to explain the behavior patterns in leisure, which these data indicate reflect general lifestyle choices.

Key words:

• camping
• carrying capacity
• crowding
• privacy
• wilderness