Commercial Recreation Research Articles

Scaffolding: A Promising Approach to Fostering Critical Thinking

Many undergraduate students struggle when asked to engage in critical thinking. One approach we have found useful in fostering critical thinking is scaffolding, a process that involves the use of prompts, supports, and modeling to build a removable structure from which students can learn complex thinking skills. Through the development of these critical thinking skills, students are better able to analyze and formulate recommendations for real world applications. This paper discusses how to incorporate a critical thinking scaffold to guide the design and facilitation of a case-based learning activity in a semester-long commercial recreation management course. Implications for the use of scaffolding in the classroom will also be discussed.

Balancing industrial and recreational use of forests - a review of empirical studies.

Abstract The value of the forest and how it should be utilized is the subject of a heated debate. The objective of this study is to review the literature on the benefits and costs of forest conservation and the adaptations of forest management practices, to improve the forest landscape for recreation. The overview focuses mainly on studies in the Nordic countries published in the last 15 years. The benefit studies provide distinct conclusions regarding the preferences of recreational users: they tend to prefer old growth rather than young forests, and favour a mixture of conifers and broadleaves over a pure conifer stand. On the cost side, there seems to be a consensus that forest conservation for recreation or biodiversity purposes has an opportunity cost in terms of foregone timber revenues. However, there is no evidence from the reviewed studies that such a conservation policy would hamper economic growth in the regions that are directly subject to the policy. On the contrary, there is some evidence that conservation can have a positive effect on local economies, mostly the result of an economic diversification towards tourism and commercial recreation. Overall, there is a striking lack of connection between the benefits and costs of forest conservation. Very few benefit studies make the extra effort to estimate the cost of the changes in forest management that the respondents in the non-market valuation studies are asked to value. Thus, one suggestion for future research is to improve the use of various methods in practical applications to ensure that guidance is comprehensive for policy decision-making.

Land tenure and salmon habitat management in Alaska's Copper River Watershed

The resources of the Copper River Watershed (CRW) are accessed by a variety of users and managed by diverse agencies representing the interests of the nation, the State of Alaska, and Alaska Native organizations. This paper will present findings from a study conducted to identify the challenges of balancing user interests with the protection of salmon habitat. It will answer the question: what are the economic, political, and social impediments to the immediate and long-term effective management of salmon habitat within the CRW from the perspective of watershed managers? It will discuss how managers view commercial recreation and development activities posing a threat to salmon habitat, the impact of the federal legislation on land management, and the way ‘organizational values’ influence how both land and salmon habitat are managed. In conclusion, this paper will also address possible future watershed co-management.

Recreational Home Users – Potential Clients for Countryside Tourism?

Today, almost half of the Finnish population has regular access to a recreational home in a rural area. As recurrent visitors, recreational home users create the potential for rural development. This study uses population survey data to approach recreational home use from the perspective of a way‐of‐life and lifestyle framework. The results demonstrate that Finnish recreational home users are more likely to be city‐dwellers and highly educated and to be employed in clerical and administrative positions. Older people who use a recreational home tend to spend more time there than users in other age categories. Recreation activity choices that reflect a more general lifestyle were analyzed in order to obtain a picture of the recreational home users as potential consumers of recreation services. Active recreational home users appear to differ distinctively from occasional users in terms of their patterns of participation in outdoor activities. Motivated by a desire for self‐sufficiency, active users participate more often in traditional rural recreational activities, such as fishing and berry and mushroom picking, than less active users. Occasional users are more likely to participate in sports‐oriented activities and spend more money on recreational home trips than active users. This family‐oriented group thus shows the greatest potential to use commercial recreation services.

Family Acculturation, Family Leisure Involvement, and Family Functioning among Mexican-Americans

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between acculturation and family leisure involvement and aspects of family functioning (cohesion and adaptability) from Mexican-American parent, youth, and family perspectives. Acculturation was measured using the Bidimensional Acculturation Scale for Hispanics (BAS), family leisure involvement was measured using the Family Leisure Activity Profile (FLAP), and family functioning was measured using the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES II). The sample was obtained from communities in Texas and Utah and consisted of 74 Mexican-American families, including a parent and child from each family. After adjusting for sociodemographic variables, the independent variables were found to help discriminate levels of acculturation for parents, youth, and families. Recommendations are given for commercial and community recreation programs targeting Mexican-American families, in addition to implications for further research.

Understanding participation patterns and trends in tourism cultural attractions

Previous studies have collectively suggested that most cultural tourists are “up-scaled” (high income earnings, high education, and mature aged). This simplistic profile of cultural tourists, however, does not seem to reflect the increasingly diversified group of cultural tourist attractions. This study examined the effects of socioeconomic and demographic traits of tourists on visitation patterns to 29 different types of cultural attractions using data from a national scale survey (conducted in 2000) of 6405 US respondents. The cultural attractions were grouped as four main types: Festival and Musical Attractions, Commercial Recreation Parks, Local Festivals and Fairs, and Knowledge/Aesthetic Seeking Attractions. The results showed that the participation patterns for diverse cultural attractions were determined by socioeconomic/demographic characteristics as well as the number/distance of trips. The effects of such traits on participation patterns by cultural tourists were different in accordance with the unique nature of each cultural attraction.

Internships in Leisure Services: An Analysis of Student and Practitioner Perceptions and Expectations

The purpose of this study was to investigate student and practitioner differences in perceptions and expectations of undergraduate internships in recreation. An on-line survey that examined the role of the internship, skills that interns should have, and perceptions of what internship agencies should provide was completed by 363 leisure service practitioners from community, campus, and commercial recreation as well as 194 recreation students from ten universities. One-way ANOVA and t-test comparisons indicated that students and practitioners differed significantly in the majority of the items on the survey. Practitioners believed that students should be stronger in developing, leading, and budgeting programs, while students felt that internship agencies should be willing to hire interns full-time and should provide greater assistance in job placement. Practitioners had different perceptions and expectations depending on what sector of the field they were employed. However, students specializing in different areas of recreation had similar expectations of internships.

Understanding Interpersonal Behavior Changes from Student to Professional

ABSTRACT Personality instruments have been used in college classrooms to help students understand how their interpersonal behaviors will affect their professional work. This investigation assessed how the interpersonal behaviors of students majoring in commercial recreation changed over a five-year time frame, from college students to practicing professionals. Although from a small sample size, data indicated that a majority of students changed personality categories; however, these changes were not statistically significant. Demographic variables showed no relationship with personality changes. These findings indicated personality assessments used in undergraduate courses may be helpful in preparing students to understand their professional style.

Our Reform Heritage: Recovering the Vision of Community Leisure Service

Given the rare opportunity to write unencumbered by the usual scholarly constraints, I take this as an occasion for reflection, asking questions that are probably good for all of us to ask from time to time; How did I get here in the first place? and What keeps me going? Thinking back to my days as a graduate student at the University of North Carolina in the mid 1970s, I recall a seminar with the historian George Mowry and my selecting, more or less at random, in the 1920s from a list of research topics he gave our class. Exploring the topic, looking around the university, I noticed H. Douglas Sessoms and his bunch across campus were running a Recreation Curriculum. I went to see Doug and my life has, quite literally, not been the same since. Under Doug's tutelage I first saw what recreation and leisure were once, and might be again. I saw then visions of social reform and transformation, of human progress and betterment that were so striking, so inspiring, that I committed myself to study and teach these topics. This reform model and vision sustain me still, confirming my commitment when I despair for my fields. Writing my master's thesis, Playground Reform: The Recreation Movement in America 1880-1920, I discovered a group of activists in the mainstream of America's Progressive Movement presenting powerful critiques of industrialization, urban society, and the excesses of capitalism. At the inception of our fields, founders of the playground around the turn of the century such as Joseph Lee and Jane Addams, established a blueprint for reform that speaks powerfully today. Looking around them at the crowded and crime ridden streets of Boston, New York, etc., they saw children denied a basic human freedom-play. They spoke out against this condition, drawing the public's attention to the problem. Marshaling public support, they took action, providing free, open spaces (sandgardens) where children could be themselves and simply play, and beginning a social movement that flourished for over thirty years. Here is the reform model in elegant simplicity. Modern life (technology, urbanization, mass culture, capitalism) crowds out humans. We are alienated; separated from our true selves, our very essence; exiled to stunted and restless artificiality. It is the reformer's role to expose this alienation, gather public support for change, and do something practical, acting in the real world to make some room for our humanity. The men and women who came afterwards, leading the recreation and parks movement, followed this reform pattern. People such as Jay Nash criticized the onslaught of commercial recreation, pointing out that Americans were becoming passive in their free time, consuming rather than creating their amusements. Spectatoritis was sweeping the land, alienating more and more people as fat, lazy, and quarrelsome bench-warmers. What to do? Provide programs for the schools, playgrounds, and recreation centers that stressed active involvement and produced healthy, engaged sportsmen and women. Others criticized the increasing speed and deadly stress of modern life, offering recreation centers and parks as places for recuperation and of relative peace and quiet. Nature? The city was crowding out all things green. Humans were separated from natural surrounding (our evolutionary home) and suffered because of it. Solution? Bring a little nature to the city (parks) or take nature-starved humans out of town for some fresh air. These pioneers took notice of what others were saying and writing (scholars and journalists) and addressed larger public concerns-the devitalizing and de-skilling of work, for example. Technology was making work less and less satisfying. The best hope for men and women alienated at work was increasing leisure. Arguably, their major complaint was the loss of community. Not only were people becoming spectators at sports events, they were becoming passive in the building and maintenance of their own local culture. …

Environmental Resources as Latent Primary Factors of Production in Tourism: The Case of Forest-Based Commercial Recreation

The supply of tourism, in many respects, remains an unresolved area of theoretical and empirical development. The reasons for this are many, but the author argues in this paper that one of the limiting core areas of conceptual development in tourism economics is the general need for an analytical framework that captures generic production processes used to produce output from the tourism sector. One important unresolved issue of production includes use of critical resources such as environmental goods that serve as latent primary factor inputs to the production process of tourism. Often, these resources are hidden from analysis due to their non-priced common-pool attributes. This is particularly true in rural amenity-rich regions where nature-based tourism firms are becoming increasingly important to regional economies. Using forest resources as an example, the incorporation of non-priced tourism production inputs more completely specifies the tourism production function, provides a critical linkage to land and recreation resource management, and allows for more integrative tourism planning approaches.

Economic Evaluation of Recreation and Tourism in Natural Areas: A Case Study in New South Wales, Australia

Provision of information for the purposes of evaluating and monitoring recreation and tourism land use is a conceptually difficult task for economists and land managers. A range of techniques has been developed since the pioneering work of Clawson and Knetsch in the 1960s to estimate the market value of recreation and tourism in natural areas. These techniques involve a number of conceptual and practical difficulties when used for environmental auditing and evaluation purposes. This article outlines the process of evaluating recreation and tourism on public lands in order to provide information for an environmental audit of the Upper North East region of New South Wales. The range of market and non-market values associated with tourism and recreation on public lands is based on existing studies of the region. The values of commercial production, recreation and tourism on public lands are compared within a structural model (input–output) of the regional economy.

An importance-performance approach to evaluating internal marketing in a recreation centre

The study examined the potential of importance-performance analysis for evaluating employee satisfaction. The technique was originally designed to measure external customer satisfaction. However, the similarity of several concepts underlying customer-organization and employee-organization relationships, suggested that the method would be appropriate for use in the context of internal marketing. The concept of internal marketing has emerged as an interface between organizational behaviour and traditional marketing, and job-related attributes developed in the context of organizational behaviour by Frederick Herzberg, appeared to be appropriate for this assessment of an organization's internal marketing. Data were collected from all 56 full-time employees at a commercial recreation centre using a 16-attribute instrument. Results did not confirm Herzberg's theory, since the highest valued attributes included both motivation and hygiene items. Management recommendations for further application and interpretation of importance-performance analysis are developed.

Emerging Institutions for Bilateral Management of the Columbia River Basin

Historically, binational governance of the Columbia River Basin has been controlled by federal agencies in the United States and federal-provincial agencies in British Columbia, both supported by the International Joint Commission. While this management system has served the region well for many years, it is now showing signs of strain. In both countries, stakeholders have identified a number of issues of concern, including the narrowness of the Columbia River Treaty. At the same time, there are pressures to create new management goals and more balanced systems of river basin planning and governance. Both countries are attempting to respond to a range of unresolved problems and concerns individually at the national level and bilaterally in the transboundary context. In this paper, we explore a spectrum of possible management outcomes that could emerge in the current search for a new consensus. All relate to questions of the values that should be sustained, and to the nature of an acceptable binational governance framework needed to achieve such values. The Context The Columbia basin has been used by societies in a variety of ways. Beginning as a provider of sustenance, water, and as a transportation artery for native peoples who first inhabited the area, its functions gradually evolved during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to include large-scale commercial fisheries, transportation, water supplies, hydroelectricity, and recreation. Beginning in the 1930s, federal dams were built on the Columbia and its tributaries, while many nonfederal projects were devised to support the numerous uses of the basin by diverting, regulating, and storing water for consumptive and instream uses (United States, BPA 1991, 5). Investment in these dams and the related infrastructure has enabled many uses to coexist. In recent years, the basin has been described not only as a scenic treasure and ecological gem, but also as the economic backbone of the entire Pacific Northwest in the United States and central interior of British Columbia (Tetra Tech 1996, 1). Although high technology industries such as aerospace engineering, scientific instruments, and computer programming now contribute 42 percent of all employment in the basin south of the 49th parallel (United States 1995c, 2-7), the Columbia basin remains a supplier of many raw materials and semifinished manufactured goods (United States 1995c, 2-1). Average runoff from the Columbia is 198 million acre feet (maf) (275,022 cubic feet per second) at the mouth, making the Columbia's discharge second only to the Missouri-Mississippi River in the United States (United States 1995b, 1-1). The river originates in central British Columbia in the Rocky Mountains. Its waters flow 1,214 miles (1,954 km) to the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Oregon, making it the fourth longest river on the continent. Its drainage basin covers 219,000 square miles (567,200 km2) in seven states, which include Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and small parts of Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah, as well as 39,500 square miles (79,000 km2) in the province of British Columbia (United States 1995a, 2; Coulson 1996, 2) (fig. 1). Natural stream flows on the Columbia have fluctuated enormously. Prior to construction of the basin's storage dams, the river's volatile waters regularly flooded, destroying portions of communities situated on dangerous flood plain locations along its banks, causing death and the destruction of property and real estate. Reservoirs were constructed to act as a safety buffer and help prevent these disasters. They created adequate storage space for times when the river is at high levels. Today, flood control takes priority over all other uses (British Columbia 1993b, 2). Given this context, a variety of mechanisms were created, mostly during this century, to govern the resources in the Columbia, separately in each country as well as binationally. From relatively simple systems initially, these have grown into increasingly complex, overlapping institutions. …

Urban Tree Residues: Results of the First National Inventory

The volume and characteristics of urban tree residues associated with tree pruning and other urban forestry activities have never been well documented, yet disposal of this residue is subject to increasing regulatory actions. The regulatory actions have a considerable impact on the activities of commercial, utility, and municipal tree care operations. This paper reports the results of the first national inventory of the volume and characteristics of urban tree residues. Residues are classified as follows: chips, logs, mixed wood, tops and brush, leaves, lawn clippings, and stumps. Generators of residues include the following: commercial tree care firms, municipal park and recreation departments, municipal tree care divisions, county tree care divisions, electric/telephone utility power line maintenance departments, nurseries, orchards, and landscapers. The national inventory assesses volume, characteristics, and disposal of the residues on both a regional basis as well as by size of metropolitan area. Finally, irregular residue inputs associated with natural disasters are discussed.

The social anxieties of Progressive reform: Atlantic City, 1854-1920

Tracing the evolution of Atlantic City from a miserable hamlet of fishermen's huts in 1854 to the nation's premier seaside resort in 1910, The Social Anxieties of Progressive Reform chronicles a bizarre political conflict that reaches to the very heart of Progressivism. Operating outside of the traditional constraints of family, church, and community, commercial recreation touched the rawest nerves of the reform impulse. The sight of young men and women frolicking in the surf and tangoing on the beach and the presence of unescorted women in boardwalk cafs and cabarets translated for many Progressives, secular and evangelical alike, into a wholesale rejection of socio-sexual restraints and portended disaster for the American family. While some viewed Atlantic City as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, others considered the resort the triumph of American democracy and a healthy and innocent release from the drudgery and regimentation of industrial society. These conflicting currents resulted in a policy of strategic censorship that evolved in stages during the formative years of the city. Sunday drinking, gambling, and prostitution were permitted, albeit under increasingly stringent controls, but resort amusements were significantly restricted and shut down entirely on Sunday. This policy also segregated blacks from the beach and the boardwalk. By 1890, more than one in five residents of Atlantic City was black, a uniquely high ratio among northern cities. While the urban economies of the north depended on immigrant labor, the resort economy of Atlantic City rested on legions of black cooks, waiters, bellmen, and domestic workers. Paulsson's description of African-American life in Atlantic City provides a vivid and comprehensive picture of life in the North during the decades following the Civil War. Paulsson's work, and his focus on changing social values and growing racial tensions, brings to light an ongoing crisis in American society, namely the chasm between religion and mass culture as embodied by the indifference to the sanctity of the Sabbath. In Atlantic City, churches mounted a nationwide effort to preserve the Christian Sunday, a movement that grew steadily after the Civil War. Paullson's account of modern Sabbatarianism provides fresh insights into the nature of evangelical reform and its relationship to the Progressive movement. Filled with over forty delightful historical photographs that vividly depict the evolution of the resort's architecture, political scene, and even swimwear, The Social Anxieties of Progressive Reform is must reading for anyone interested in American mass culture, Progressivism, and reform movements. Paulsson has illustrated the story with over forty delightful historical photographs that vividly depict the evolution of the resort's architecture, political scene, and even swimwear.

The recreation profession, capital, and democracy

Abstract It is contended that the recreation profession and its craft, recreation, have been ideological modus operandi in the interests of capital and that with the rise of commercial and corporate recreation, the recreation profession is moving from a supportive stance to one of corporate emulation. The evolution of the recreation profession from ideological cohort of capital to an emulator of capital is described as natural, yet masked, given the profession's philanthropic and public‐sector roots. The recreation movement and the industrial efficiency movement are both cast as similar ideological social reform movements that serve to obfuscate participatory democracy via the hybrid‐capitalist democracy. The practical and ideological metamorphosis the recreation profession must undergo to become an advocate of, and integral to, participatory democracy is explored. This metamorphosis is not novel but is a return to the profession's very subject matter in the classical meaning of the term leisure and in th...

PUBLIC, PRIVATE AND COMMERCIAL: VARIATIONS IN ORGANIZATIONAL PURPOSE AND PRACTICE OF LEISURE SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

ABSTRACT Organizational purpose and actual practice of selected public, private and commercial organizations comprising the community leisure service system were studied. The sample frame included organizations from local government park and recreation departments, YMCA's, clinical therapeutic institutions, local government special recreation associations and commercial recreation enterprises. A three-dimensional approach to characterizing organizational purpose revealed significant variations between organization types regarding their missions as well as their actual practices. Some organization types were found to exhibit more incongruity than others relative to the three purposes of increased ratio of revenue to expenses, compliance with popular public or market wants, and enhancement of human and/or environmental well-being.

Perceived changes in grandmother-grandchild relations following a child's separation or divorce.

When 80 grandmothers were queried about interaction pre- and post-marital breakdown, contact between them and their grandchildren was perceived to increase, as well as participation in commercial recreation and provision of certain types of support, such as babysitting, teaching family history and tradition, and proffering advice on personal problems. Geographic proximity and the custodial status of adult children were important factors mediating perceived changes in contact and support.

The future of Latin American urban transport

Abstract The quality of urban life is strongly influenced by transportation systems. These systems condition the speed and comfort of daily journeys to work, school and other destinations, as well as the location of residences, commercial and industrial establishments and recreation areas. Transport systems are themselves conditioned by the political and economic characteristics of the societies where they are found: where such social characteristics are similar, the transport systems are likely to be also. This article analyses the principal characteristics of Latin American transport systems and their effects on the quality of urban life. Some underlying social factors responsible for the selection of certain modes and policies are also discussed.

Why Curricula in Tourism and Commercial Recreation?

With the increased proliferation of programs throughout the United States and the world, it is very timely to hold this forum on present trends and issues in curricula for tourism and commer cial recreation. And, it is especially appropriate because this appears to be the very first time at a national scale that the curricular interlacings between recreation, in its traditional public sense, and the fields of recreation and tourism in a commercial sense have been considered. This paper addresses just three questions: 1. What is a model curriculum? 2. Are current programs educating or training? 3. Have aims, goals and objectives been defined?