Predictors of Behavioral Loyalty Among Hikers Along the Appalachian Trail

Abstract

In recent years, conceptual and empirical papers have begun to appear in the leisure literature examining the processes leading to the formation of recreationist loyalty. While this work is still in its infancy, current understanding suggests that leisure involvement plays a formative role in the development of social psychological commitment, which in turn, is an antecedent to loyalty to a brand or organization. In the context of natural resource-based recreation the concept of loyalty is most often used to refer to recreationists' attachments to specific recreation areas. The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of the first order structural relations among involvement (i.e., Centrality, Attraction, Self Expression), commitment (i.e., Social Investment, Financial Investment, Position Involvement, Informational Complexity, Volitional Choice), resistance to change (i.e., Activity Resistance, Place Resistance) and behavioral loyalty for hikers along the Appalachian Trail. These data provided partial support of our hypothesized model. The strength of the structural models varied and not all predictors were significant. Also, the valence of the dimensional relations varied. These data highlight several measurement related issues relating to each of the constructs modeled. These measurement issues inhibit progress toward a fuller understanding of the relationships between each of the constructs and their dimensions.

Keywords:

• loyalty
• place attachment
• commitment
• leisure involvement
• hiking

Gerard Kyle is an Assistant Professor affiliated with the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University. Alan Graefe is an Associate Professor affiliated with the Leisure Studies program at The Pennsylvania State University. Robert Manning is a Professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, and James Bacon is a graduate research assistant in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont.

Notes

¹While this work provided insight into place attachment's formative processes, Moore and Graefe's measures of involvement (i.e., the use of a single item measure) could be considered limited given the field's current understanding of involvement (i.e., multi-item measures are required to measure several dimensions).

²Place attachment was measured using a single summative index including measures of both place dependence and place identity.

³ Bricker's (1998) measure of specialization included several dimensions, which included centrality to lifestyle. On this dimension, enduring involvement was one of four sub-components. This measure was a single summative scale adapted from McIntyre and Pigram (1992).

⁴National Park Service staff estimate that the AT receives approximately 4,000,000 visitors each year. In 1999, only 376 thru hikers, hiking the traditional South to North route, completed hiking the length of the trail.

¹Measured using a Likert-type format where 1 = Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree.

²Measured using eight categories beginning with $0 through to More than $5000.

³The proportion of use was derived by dividing respondents' weekly use of the Appalachian Trail by the sum of all trails hiked per week.

*Reverse coded.

¹Root mean square error (Steiger & Lind, 1980): Values ≤ .08 indicated acceptable fit.

²Goodness-of-fit index (Hu & Bentler, 1995): Values ≥ .90 indicate acceptable fit.

³Comparative fit index (Bentler, 1990): Values ≥ .90 indicate acceptable fit.

⁴Normed fit index (Benlter & Bonnet): Values ≥ .90 indicate acceptable fit.

⁵Although .89 is just below the suggested cutoff of .90, several other indices of model fit reported in Table 3 suggest good fit.

⁶Please see Unruh's (1979) conceptualization of social worlds to see the definition of this segment.

⁷Equipment knowledge was operationalized as “familiarity with running shoe attributes.”

⁸ Pritchard et al. (1999) have suggested that resistance to change is primary evidence of psychological commitment.

⁹We acknowledge that visitor satisfaction and service quality are important considerations, however, we concur with Borrie et al.'s (1999) suggestion that these elements should not drive agency objectives.