Participation and nonparticipation in interpretation : a study of people, places and activities

Abstract

Interpretive activities, a group of recreational events, are programmed and provided by a number of public, private and nonprofit organizations in the United States, Canada and England. The topic of interpretation has been researched to an extent and a variety of definitions have been developed. Most research has attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of interpretive programs or predict participation. Few studies have sought to identify certain empirical regularities regarding people, their use of recreation places and the interpretive activities they do or do not participate in at those places. The current research project adapted certain conceptual frameworks that have shown promise in other recreation behavior studies. These were social group measures, the concept of recreation place, multiple measures of participation and structural properties of recreational activities. Three groups of variables -- social aggregate variables, social group variables and recreation place variables -- were examined for their utility in describing and explaining participation in interpretive activities or subgroups of interpretive activities. Each group of variables was adapted from studies which emphasized certain aspects of how people organize themselves for recreational pursuits. Three data sets gathered in different geographical regions in the United States were used. Certain variables were repeated in two or more data sets. Randomly selected telephone numbers were generated to produce region-wide samples of 1,500 each in two data sets. A systematic selection procedure employed on-site in National Park Service areas in another geographic region resulted in a third sample of 1,500. Analysis of the data was conducted to test a series of hypotheses...