An Examination of Recreationists' Relationships with Activities and Settings

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.