An exploration of commitment in nature-based recreation, and its relationship with participation and purchase behaviour

ABSTRACT

Commitment to nature-based recreation is important for health outcomes, to support the conservation of the natural environment, and for economic reasons. Committed participants are likely to continue to support the activity with their subscriptions and memberships, and to make other activity-related purchases. However, the relationship between the psychological and behavioural components of commitment remains contested. This research investigates the commitment-behaviour link to help us understand some of the outcomes of nature-based recreation. The study used a modified version of the Sport Commitment Model (SCM) to measure the psychological commitment of 1024 nature-based recreationists active in freshwater angling, mountaineering, hunting or tramping. We examined the relationship between their psychological and behavioural commitment, measuring this through the frequency of participation and activity-related expenditure. Findings suggest a positive relationship for both, although surprisingly stronger for purchase than participation. However, we also identified a confounding effect of income, with activity-related expenditure being related to both psychological commitment and income.

KEYWORDS:

• Nature-based recreation
• commitment
• participation
• purchase
• Sport Commitment Model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Brent Lovelock is Associate Professor at the Department of Tourism, University of Otago, and Co-director of the Centre for Recreation Research. His research addresses sustainable and ethical tourism and recreation. He has co-authored a book on the Ethics of Tourism and undertaken related work on consumptive wildlife tourism and medical tourism.

Carla Jellum is an Assistant Professor at Central Washington University in the Recreation, Tourism and Events Program. Her expertise and research interests are in the areas of sustainable tourism and ethical travel; recreation and wilderness activity participation; rural tourism development; and festival and community event engagement.

Anna Carr is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Tourism, University of Otago and Co-director of the Centre for Recreation Research. Her research interests are focused on environmental management of tourism and recreation, cultural landscapes and Indigenous development. She serves on the editorial boards for Tourism in Marine Environments, Journal of Ecotourism, and the Journal of Heritage Tourism.

Tim Jowett is a statistical consultant in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at the University of Otago.

Notes

1. To a degree the behavioural component of commitment bears similarities with the concept of loyalty. While loyalty is not the focus of this paper, it is necessary to alert the reader to the conceptual and semantic overlaps between loyalty and behavioural commitment, the concepts being described as being ‘close psychological relatives’ by Pritchard, Havitz and Howard (1999, 334).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Sport New Zealand.