An Examination of Recreationists' Relationships with Activities and Settings

Abstract

The place attachment construct has demonstrated utility for explaining a variety of leisure behavior in outdoor recreation contexts. Preliminary evidence suggests that recreationists' involvement with leisure activities is an antecedent to their attachment to specific settings. Multidimensional measures of these constructs, however, indicate that linear interpretations of their relations may be misleading. Given that both involvement and place attachment examine recreationists' association with activities and settings, the potential for variation among activity and setting types is high. Thus, the purpose of this investigation was to further examine the relationship between involvement and place attachment for hikers along the Appalachian Trail, boaters (i.e., kayakers and rafters) along the South Fork of the American River in California, and anglers in New England. The results illustrated that recreationists' relationships with activities and settings varied among the three groups examined. That is, the effect of involvement on place attachment differed among these groups of recreationists.

Keywords:

• place attachment
• leisure involvement
• hiking
• boating
• angling

Gerard Kyle is an Assistant Professor affiliated with the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University; Kelly Bricker is an Assistant Professor affiliated with the Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Resources Program at West Virginia University; Alan Graefe is an Associate Professor affiliated with the School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Recreation Management at the Pennsylvania State University; Thomas Wickham is an Assistant Professor affiliated with the Department of Earth Sciences at California University of Pennsylvania.

We thank Robert Manning and Deborah Kerstetter for their contributions to earlier stages of this research.

Notes

¹ Use estimates were estimates based on staff and volunteer heuristics.

² The Appalachian Trail Conference is a volunteer-based, not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, management and promotion of the trail.

³ National 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.

⁴ These months account for the majority of all use, 81%.

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

⁵ NFI, GFI and CFI values range form 0 to 1.0.

∗∗p < .01.

∗∗∗p < .001.

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.

⁶ The invariance of relations among second-order constructs was not substantively relevant to this study's purpose and therefore was not included in the invariance testing procedures.

⁷ Awareness sets refer to recreationists' cognitive complexity relating to the activity and knowledge of available alternatives, e.g., service providers and settings.

⁸ Evoked sets refer to realistic options from which an individual might realistically choose.