Recreation, Tourism, and Sport

Abstract

In North America, the subdisciplines of recreation geography, tourism geography, and sport geography (RTS) are alive and well. From their beginnings as serious research topics in the 1930s (cf. Mitchell and Smith 1989), the RTS subfields have gradually emerged as legitimate and significant areas of study within North American geography. Among the three subdisciplines, tourism geography has experienced the greatest growth in recent years, and in view of the role of tourism in the world economy, that growth trend is expected to continue. This chapter presents an overview of research in recreation geography, tourism geography, and sport geography by North American geographers since 1988. Research conducted prior to that date was summarized in Mitchell and Smith’s (1989) chapter in the first volume of Geography of America (Gaile and Willmott 1989), and readers are urged to consult that reference. An excellent summary of themes in RTS research from a global perspective is provided by Hall and Page (1999). According to a traditional, dualistic Western definition, all time can be divided into two categories: work and leisure. Leisure, or non-work time, is filled with various activities (or “non-activities”) such as watching television, playing games, and socializing. Whereas the study of many leisure activities falls within the domains of psychology, physical education, and sociology, most leisure activities also lend themselves to geographic analysis. This is where the origins of RTS geography lie. Tourism and recreation activities exhibit distinct place, time, distance, and activity patterns. For example, tourism is typically more passive and entails more distant and extended travel than does most recreation. Sport is a form of recreation that includes both active participation and passive spectator activities. Leisure studies is a broad and multidisciplinary research area that encompasses most of the RTS literature, and that has engendered its own body of literature that geographers have contributed to. However, the terms “leisure geography” or “geography of leisure” never came into common use among North American geographers. Mitchell and Smith (1989) noted that the term “recreation geography” was coined in 1954, and up through the 1970s it seemed best to reflect the predominant interests of North American geographers studying leisure activities.