Introduction to theme issue on leisure places and spaces

Leisure places and spaces is an important topic for investigation as these places and spaces provide the context or containers in which leisure phenomena and leisure experiences occur. This theme issue consists of seven papers that are related in one way or another to leisure places and spaces. The order of the papers in this issue moves in general from topics that are concerned with physical places to those that are more related to social spaces.

The place investigated in the first paper by Thomsen et al. (2023) is federally designated wilderness in the United States. This paper is a scoping review of visitor use management (VUM) research, conducted between 2000 and 2020 in federally designated wilderness areas, that evaluated trends in research and identified eight themes: visitor experience, wilderness character, visitor use, planning and policy, recreation ecology, VUM methodology, relevancy and additional values, and stewardship. The authors claim that this review can provide direction for future VUM wilderness research.

Three forest areas (Protomagno, Monte Morello, and Tret) in Italy are the places considered in the second paper by Alessandro et al. (2023) who applied the Travel Cost Method (TCM) to the economic valuing of nature-based recreation based on both the proximity of the forest area to urban areas and the forest features. In all three forest areas hiking was the most important recreational activity followed by picnicking and mountain-biking. Managed natural forests were found to have a greater recreational economic value than unmanaged planted forests, while near-urban forests had a greater number of visitors but a lower economic value per visit than mountain forests.

The places investigated in the third paper by Schirck-Matthews et al. (2023) were 161 Florida State Parks. Activity data from three fitness tracker apps were used to determine which features (landcover, boundaries, entrances, points of interest, trails) of these Florida State Parks and their surroundings (e.g., major cities, airports, bays and oceans) were associated with frequency of paddling, running, cycling and hiking activities. Runners, hikers and cyclists were attracted to parks with a greater density of the respective trail type while the number of canoe/kayak launch sites and percent of water landcover were significant predictors of more paddling activities. The number of restroom facilities and the population within a 30-minute drive were examples of factors positively associated with the frequency of activity in all four recreational activities.

While the first three papers focus on natural places beyond urban settings, the fourth paper focuses on two urban parks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Kim et al. (2023) investigated the factors that are associated with perceived park ownership. Social motivations, informal social control, social cohesion, frequency of use and park proximity to residential neighborhoods were all associated with perceived ownership of these urban parks. Furthermore, park proximity was positively associated with perceived park ownership through social motivation, informal social control and social cohesion.

The fifth paper reflects places and spaces more broadly as it examines access to municipal recreation in terms of (1) facilities and open spaces (e.g., parks and trails, sports fields, community centers, arenas and pools), (2) programs and services, and (3) events such as sports tournaments, cultural celebrations, and festivals in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Through interviews with 16 municipal recreation practitioners, Oncescu and Fortune (2023) determined that these practitioners viewed access to these municipal recreation places and spaces for low-income residents primarily in terms of financial resources and overcoming barriers such as transportation and “even just getting to places” (pp. 96–97).

The place researched in the sixth paper was a street with emerging cafes where locals and tourists spend their leisure in a small city in Turkey. Utilizing the concept of place attachment, that is, the emotional bond between a person and a place, Sop and Kervankıran (2023) explored the relationships between several place attachment dimensions. They discovered that three of these dimensions (place social bonding, place affect, and place dependence), directly influenced place satisfaction. As people developed positive feelings and connectedness toward the cafes street and when others around them displayed a similar attachment, satisfaction with the place was strengthened. This place attachment was found to be a significant antecedent of word-of-mouth communication, that is, individuals often spoke highly of this cafe street and recommended it to others.

The last paper in this theme issue does not focus on a physical place but upon the social space of the cribbage social world. A social world is a setting in which people share a specialized knowledge and interest as well as relate their shared experiences with each other. In an ethnographic study over a period of three years in the United States, Kitheka and Comer (2023) investigated the social worlds of cribbage players through the lenses of recreation specialization, inclusiveness and closeness. Results portrayed a distinct cribbage culture characterized by varying degrees of connectedness, specialization, and levels of commitment. Findings also revealed a lack of diversity in the cribbage social world.