Social regularities in outdoor recreation

The social norms approach has been a popular theoretical and methodological model for studying behavioral problems in outdoor recreation. Recently, researchers have questioned the applicability of the model, whether ‘'norms'’ have been measured or not, and whether important components of the norm model, such as sanctions, have been given adequate consideration. In response to these concerns, this paper reviews the theoretical basis of norms in social science, and the application of norms, primarily through Jackson's (1966) Return Potential Model (RPM), to problems in outdoor recreation. A problem with the RPM, as applied by outdoor recreation researchers, concerns the normative content of the measures derived from the Jackson model. That is, unambiguous normative terms (e.g., should, ought, must) have not been used to measure norms. A second problem concerns the power of norms to affect behavior through sanctions. Sanctions have not been measured in outdoor recreation applications of the social norms approach. This article argues that sanctions should be measured, and suggests that this be done by asking about personal feelings of anxiety, guilt, anger, and so forth, as well as feelings of group, community, and societal pressure, coercion, or obligation. Social norms researchers (Shelby & Vaske, 1991) have argued that norms and sanctions may not be prevalent in outdoor recreation settings because they are emerging, or because they begin as nonnormative conventions. The article reviews the issues of emerging norms and conventions, and uses this information plus the previous information to develop a model of nonnormative and normative social regularities.

Keywords:

• Conventions
• emerging norms
• norms
• sanctions
• social regularities
• standards