Recreation Specialization Revisited
نویسنده
چکیده
The essence of specialization theory, first published in The Journal of Leisure Research in 1977 (Bryan) and subsequently expanded in a 1979 monograph (Bryan), is that outdoor recreation participants can be placed on a continuum from general interest and low involvement to specialized interest and high involvement. Each level of specialization carries distinctive behaviors and orientations. These include equipment preference, type of experience sought, desired setting for the activity, attitudes toward resource management, preferred social context, even vacation patterns. Subsequent testing and refinement of the theory and its applications over more than two decades created a substantial literature on the topic. Researchers added to the body of knowledge through their studies and insights and led productive debate on the theory's accuracy, power, and applicability. Doing justice to this literature in a few pages would be a daunting, if not an impossible, task. I myself have done little subsequent work on the topic since framing it, other than using the specialization perspective in teaching and as a tangential concept in other areas of work. What can be done in this space, however, is to share a few reflections on the origins of the theory and its formulation and thoughts on applicability to other areas. Perhaps this will point to research directions andstimulate wider application in the new century ahead.
منابع مشابه
Serious Leisure and Recreation Specialization: An Uneasy Marriage
A case is made to wed research on serious leisure and recreation specialization. Before such a marriage can occur, the strengths and differences of the two perspectives must be examined. In this article, four important contributions of the recreation specialization are put forward that will further our understanding of serious leisure and intense forms of leisure. These are (1) there is diversi...
متن کاملRecreation Specialization in the Social World of Contract Bridge
The recreation specialization concept is finding increased use among leisure researchers. To date, it's application has been limited to studies of outdoor recreationists, including anglers (Bryan, 1977; Graefe, 1980; Ditton, Loomis, & Choi, 1992) boaters (Donnelly, Vaske, & Graefe, 1986), canoeists (Wellman, Roggenbuck, & Smith, 1982; Kaufman, 1984), hikers (Williams, & Huffman, 1986; Virden & ...
متن کاملAdvanced or Addicted? Exploring the Relationship of Recreation Specialization to Flow Experiences and Online Game Addiction
Advanced or Addicted? Exploring the Relationship of Recreation Specialization to Flow Experiences and Online Game Addiction Tsung-Chiung (Emily) Wu a , David Scott b & Chun-Chieh Yang c a Department of Tourism, Recreation and Leisure Studies , National Dong Hwa University , Hualien , Taiwan , ROC b Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences , Texas A&M University , College Station , TX...
متن کاملCausal commutative arrows revisited Causal commutative arrows revisited
Causal commutative arrows (CCA) extend arrows with additional constructs and laws that make them suitable for modelling domains such as functional reactive programming, differential equations and synchronous dataflow. Earlier work has revealed that a syntactic transformation of CCA computations into normal form can result in significant performance improvements, sometimes increasing the speed o...
متن کامل