Exploring motivations of winter backcountry recreationists in support of avalanche risk communication

Following best practices from risk communication research, there are growing efforts to better understand avalanche forecast users and find opportunities to improve the effectiveness of avalanche safety information products and services. While motivations are a well-established topic in the recreation literature, the avalanche safety community has so far only paid limited attention to this dimension of their target community. The objective of this study is to examine 1) the importance of different motivations related to the types of experiences recreationists seek in the winter backcountry, 2) whether we can identify distinct motivation profiles among our sample of backcountry recreationists, and 3) how these motivations relate to other measures of backcountry and avalanche safety practices such as preferred backcountry terrain, level of formal avalanche safety training, and primary winter backcountry activity. Drawing from the avalanche forecast research panels of the Euregio and Swiss Avalanche Warning Services, we examined patterns in 15 motivation items among 2121 European winter backcountry recreationists. Overall, we found a clear hierarchy of motivations from least to most important. While the motivations vary on a continuum, we identified six clusters with distinct motivation patterns using a k-means approach: the Overall Keeners, Less Enthusiastic, Serenity Seekers , Skills Focused, Summit Focused, and Challenge & Risk Minded . Our analyses of the relationships between motivations, terrain preferences, avalanche safety training level, and primary winter backcountry activity show the expected patterns but also highlight the wide range of motivational patterns that exist across the community and warrant a more comprehensive characterization beyond the traditional focus on backcountry activity and avalanche safety training level. Our results provide initial practical insights into how knowledge of recreationists’ motivations and preferences can be leveraged to design more targeted avalanche safety products and services intended to resonate better with the motivations, needs, and capabilities of different audiences.