Tag: ClemsonResearch

Faculty in Clemson’s parks, recreation and tourism management department won three of six national awards presented by The Academy of Leisure Sciences at its annual conference in February. The awards program recognizes those who have demonstrated outstanding performance in teaching, research or service in leisure studies and its related fields.

A department graduate student was also recognized for her potential as a scholar in recreation and leisure studies.

Interim Chair Jeffrey Hallo says that the awards are indicative of the impact the department’s students and scholars are making in the field.

“I’m not surprised to see such outstanding recognition of the value our faculty and students bring to the study and teaching of leisure sciences,” Hallo said. “It’s affirming to see that their colleagues throughout the country feel the same way I do about their work and commitment to their profession.”

The department’s award recipients include:

Excellence in Teaching Award – Lauren Duffy, PhD

Lauren Duffy, associate professor of travel and tourism, was recognized for consistently demonstrating an outstanding ability as a teacher of leisure sciences. Duffy’s teaching approach actively engages students in course content, creating inclusive learning environments and diversifying the methods she uses to teach. She provides opportunities for her students to work directly with community organizations and governments, ensuring the knowledge they develop is firmly rooted in both a focus on service and a practical understanding of the profession. She feels her most important job is to create critical thinkers who are prepared to engage with complex problem-solving and global issues of the 21^st century.

Duffy is also a 2019-20 Clemson University Teaching Forward Fellow and 2018 recipient of the Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from The Clemson University College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences.

New Researcher Award – Ryan Gagnon, PhD

Ryan Gagnon, assistant professor of community recreation, sport and camp management, was recognized for exceptional research contributions since earning his doctorate. The award signifies Gagnon’s potential to become an exceptional member of the Academy as his career progresses.

Gagnon’s research is focused on improving out-of-school programs as contexts for youth thriving and development, exploring how out-of-school settings can best serve youth from poverty contexts and examining the role and influence of overparenting on youth development. Since 2015, Gagnon has published 28 peer reviewed journal articles, two book chapters and 22 conference proceedings, while also completing more than 48 research papers, posters and educational sessions. He’s also part of research grants and contracts totaling close to $1.5 million (including a grant from the National Science Foundation).

Gagnon has also been recognized with a Doctoral Degree Candidate Research Award (2017) from the Clemson University College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences, as well as through his department and other external organizations.

Innovation in Teaching Award – PRTM Writing Mentorship Project

Faculty members: Gwynn Powell, PhD and Lauren Duffy, PhD

Inaugural PRTM Writing Mentorship Project Members: E’Lisha Fogle, Paul Gremillion, Karleisha Kakraba, Tori Kleinbort, Lisa Olsen and Lauren Stephens

The team, led by Gwynn Powell and Lauren Duffy, was recognized for transforming how their department’s undergraduate, graduate students and faculty address professional written communication. The PRTM Writing Mentorship Project applies a “learning through teaching” approach that gives graduate students the tools and skills they need to effectively coach undergraduate students – improving the writing skills and ability of both groups.

The project brought together professionals, faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students, ensuring an approach informed by professional needs and standards. This work was started through a grant from the Pearce Center for Professional Communication and is now in its third year, with improvements being made every cycle.

Powell is the only member of the Academy to have been recognized with this award three times.

Hannah Wells – TALS Future Scholar

Hannah Wells, a graduate student in the department, attended the conference as part of the Academy’s Future Scholars Program, which gives graduate students interested in pursuing a doctorate in an area related to recreation and leisure sciences an opportunity to connect with scholars in the field by attending the Academy’s annual conference. Wells was paired with an Academy mentor during the conference and received $1,000 from the Academy to cover her transportation, lodging and meal expenses.

Award recipients are chosen based on their academic ability; indications of scholarly potential in the field based on their publications, presentations and research experience; level of professionalism and their intention to pursue a doctoral degree in the future.

Wells was previously recognized in 2019 for her achievements as a student by the parks, recreation and tourism management department at Clemson. She received awards for academic excellence (department-wide), departmental honors (graduate) and academic excellence in recreational therapy.

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The parks, recreation and tourism management department at Clemson University is one of the largest and most well-recognized programs of its type in the nation. It offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in  community recreation, sport and camp management, park and conservation area management, PGA golf management, public administration, recreational therapy, travel and tourism, and youth development leadership.

Clemson youth development researcher and Associate Professor Dr. Ed Bowers has always had a natural curiosity about other people and cultures, particularly why people do what they do.

“I’ve always been interested in how people think and act in different environments and situations, and how the cultural context they live in can influence their beliefs and behaviors,” he says.

That curiosity is taking him all over the world. Over the course of his career so far, he’s visited more a dozen countries and taught in Dublin as part of an international service program, experiencing different cultures and perspectives wherever he goes.

When he visits a new place, he pays close attention to things most travelers are not likely to typically consider, such as what strengths young people need to develop in order to succeed, and how they may differ from what success may look like at home.

“It’s a habit at this point. People and our motivations are more complex than you might think,” he says. “For example, if you’re living in a remote area without ready access to core services such as education, health care or transportation, you’re going to see different measures of success than someone who is living in a major urban center.”

Dr. Bowers carries that curiosity to his research, which asks similar questions, but through a focus on positive youth development, and how youth-adult relationships can influence what goes right in the lives of children and adolescents. His work helps us figure out what every parent asks themselves at some point – why did my child do that? And do they have the characteristics and support they need to be successful in life?

His research also focuses on the strengths of youth, instead of negative behaviors. Bowers says this is because even though there is a widespread belief that the teen years are marked by ‘storm and stress,’ most teenagers are actually doing relatively well.

“Youth do make bad decisions, and there are reasons for that, but they also give to charities, care about people, and have sympathy and empathy for others,” he says. “Teenagers can contribute in positive ways to their communities. Building on these youth strengths rather than focusing on their deficits is a more effective way to promote thriving in young people.”

In 2015, Dr. Bowers and several of his academic colleagues explored measures that can help define positive skills and growth in a book they edited together about promoting positive youth development. The book shares a model that people working in positive youth development commonly use to measure a child’s strengths, called the Five Cs – competence, confidence, caring, compassion and character.

Dr. Bowers helped contribute to that model by examining youth responses from across the country to create a measure focused on what a thriving teenager looks like in a community, asking questions about skills or things that they do that demonstrate success.

Character, for example, can be measured by doing the right thing, having integrity and valuing diversity. Caring, on the other hand, is assessed by whether or not the teenager is bothered by seeing bad things happen to people, or if they want to step in and help.

Dr. Bowers is now working with colleagues in other universities and community organizations to apply that model to youth in other countries and environments, so they can determine how measures of success may need to be adjusted, depending on where and how youth live.

“For example, when measuring competence, a First Nations teenager living in a remote area in Canada’s Northwest Territories needs to have certain skills to succeed that would make no sense to a suburban kid in Boston,” he says. “We’re drilling deeper into the measures to find out exactly what skills are necessary in their specific contexts, to ensure the model can adapt to reflect their unique situations.”

How does one find out what measures work for certain groups of people? According to Dr. Bowers, the first step is asking them. Right now, he’s working with Maasai Mara University in Kenya, Oregon State University, and the University of South Carolina on a Templeton World Charity Foundation funded project to develop a new tool that youth workers will be able use to assess character strengths among Kenyan youth. The project is one of only 14 funded from over 150 applications spanning 55 countries around the globe, and involves interviews with 60 youth and 15 adults to get a sense of what measures are most important for youth living in different environments.

“Within Nairobi, there are teenagers living more traditional lives and street kids who are working towards very different ideas of success,” he says. “The challenge is to develop a model that can be tailored to specifically measure what skills and supports they need to be successful in their specific context of their shared community.”

The instrument they develop will be tested on a sample of 450 youths to establish its validity, relevance and ease of use. Dr. Bowers says the impact of this new tool will be far-reaching.

“This project is not just building a tool for one community,” he says. “It’s also building capacity for youth workers and scholars to conduct high quality research and become a hub for youth development in that area of the African continent.”

Dr. Bowers is also using other opportunities to identify new avenues for applied research to benefit young people. In June he traveled to Senegal with a group of Clemson student-athletes and staff on a school construction project organized by buildOn, a non-profit organization that constructs a new school every two days in some of the economically poorest countries around the world. Now he’s working with YDL program graduate and buildOn Community Engagement Manager Aled Hollingworth to apply their experiences to the development of innovative service-learning opportunities. Next fall, Dr. Bowers also plans to co-teach an international virtual exchange course with a colleague in Vietnam. The course will bring together students from Clemson with students at Ho Chi Minh City Open University to explore the role of digital media in the lives of young people from different cultures.

He says that projects like the Kenyan initiative, service-learning study abroad experiences like the Senegal trip, and virtual exchanges are key to gathering the input needed to tailor youth development measurement tools for global communities. These experiences are equally important for students looking to enter the youth development field.

“Finding ways to get students out in these different cultures conducting field work is the best way to build their skills to see development from a systems perspective, extend our reach, and continue to build capacity in communities they visit,” he says. “Exchanges can also make a big difference, by connecting youth development students from other countries with our students to engage in discussions about best practices, and then identify ways to best promote thriving in diverse communities. Our goal is to encourage positive youth development in a global society.”

Louise Orr had finished her undergraduate degree and was working in state government, when she decided she needed a change.

“I had always loved wildlife and been interested in conservation, and had briefly considered studying zoology in college, but went a different route by studying communications instead,” she says. “I realized a few years after my graduation that not only could I still pursue that love for wildlife, but I could apply my communications background and experience to making a difference in the conservation field.”

Louise is now pursuing her master’s degree in parks and conservation management in Clemson University’s Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management department. Her research focuses on how our political beliefs influence what types of conservation messages are most likely to reach us, or motivate us to take action.

“Most people have never seen an animal in the wild, making them largely disassociated from problems tigers face,” says Louise. “My research is exploring several variables, such as levels of knowledge about tiger conservation, their political ideologies and their moral foundations, to find out what kind of messages they would be most receptive to, so we can help organizations working to save tigers better encourage people to get involved and learn more about the need for tiger conservation and how they can help.”

One of the variables Louise is exploring is whether a person’s connection to a tiger mascot school would have any influence on their engagement in conservation behavior. If someone is passionate about their university’s mascot, does that translate to a passion for that animal in the wild and make them more likely to participate in conservation efforts?

Louise’s research for her master’s agree transfers well to her part-time job working as an Assistant Project Coordinator for the Tigers United University Consortium. The consortium is devoted to tiger conservation and consists of four land-grant, tiger mascot universities working collaboratively on this issue – Clemson University, Auburn University, Louisiana State University and the University of Missouri.

The consortium’s universities are all raising awareness of tiger conservation through Tigers United Week, which runs from September 3 to 7 in Clemson. Several activities are planned, including a documentary screening about a man’s quest to get a Siberian Tiger on camera, a Scarcity Scavenger Hunt with a grand cash prize, and an information booth with an opportunity to meet Clemson’s First Lady Beth Clements and her daughter, Grace. The week culminates with a launch of a new, 30 second video about the consortium’s mission during the Clemson football game on Saturday, September 7. More information about Tigers United Week and its activities can be found on the Tigers United blog.

Dr. Brett Wright, dean emeritus of Clemson’s College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences, is the consortium’s Director and Louise’s faculty advisor. He says Louise’s background in communications and her current research focus makes her a valuable part of the consortium team.

“A big part of the work we do at the consortium is getting the message out in a way that motivates people to make a difference, and Louise’s research and communications expertise will help us figure out how to best get our message across,” he says. “After all, students, faculty and alumni chant ‘Go Tigers’ on a daily basis, but not many know the truth about the animal we hold so dear – and how close they are to extinction. Fewer still may know how they can help.”

Louise is excited to help organizations like the consortium refine their conservation messaging.

“It’s a great feeling to combine what I’m passionate about with my knowledge and experience in the communications field, and to use it to make a difference in the world” she says. “Especially since this work is critically important. If we don’t continue to work hard and do what we can – our children and grandchildren aren’t going to have tigers in the wild. They’re going to be gone.”

We all know that healthy eating and being active are important. According to Clemson Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management assistant professor Mariela Fernandez, however, where you live also has more of a role in our overall health than you might think. In fact, she says, research shows that some neighborhoods are more detrimental to your health than others.

“There’s a documented link between your health and whether or not you live in a built environment with access to core services such as health care, internet, transportation and recreational infrastructure,” says Fernandez. “If you live in this type of environment, you’re more likely to be physically active and make healthier choices, because the tools to do that are readily available to you.”

Many Latinx people, however, particularly those who have recently immigrated to the United States, are more likely to live in rural communities without access to those core services. Families are drawn to these communities for several reasons, such as affordability of housing, the possibility of increased job opportunities, and existing socio-cultural networks.

Although research has been conducted on the link between the built environment and health, Fernandez and former graduate student Garrett Stone wanted to find out how much of that existing research focused on Latinx communities. In 2016, they teamed up with undergraduate student Alondra DeSantiago to conduct a systematic review of academic literature that examines the influence of the rural built environment on Latinx health outcomes and behavior in the United States. The results of that review were recently published in Ethnicity and Health.

The group looked at nearly 2,500 articles before narrowing them down to approximately 146 full-text sources for their final review. Results suggested that the lack of a built environment in rural Latinx communities does contribute to negative physical, mental and behavioral outcomes.

“We found that Latinx families living in rural areas throughout the United States are facing a number of challenges, including access to health care and medical information,” says Stone, now an Assistant Professor at Vancouver Island University. “It doesn’t help that these families tend to be living in run-down, crowded places, and are disproportionally exposed to environmental hazards such as pesticides and agricultural run-off, which increases their need for ongoing medical services that are out of reach.”

The study found that health disparities are exacerbated by the fact that rural Latinx communities have become new destination sites for first generation immigrants who have unique challenges and concerns tied to their documentation status, English language proficiency and unfamiliarity with the medical system.

“This adds another barrier to those who, even if they had the means to search for health information, don’t know how, where or if they are able to access basic services,” said Fernandez.

Although the review identified several issues for Latinx communities in rural areas, Fernandez notes that they also found several limitations to existing research, necessitating further study.

“The articles we reviewed made clear connections between the rural built environment and Latinx health outcomes and behaviors, but few explored those connections in detail or if changes to the built environment could result in changes in health over time,” says Fernandez. “We see a clear and pressing need for more focused research in this area.”

Fernandez plans to use the findings of the systematic review to start building relationships with local rural communities in South Carolina to verify her study findings and work with families to create a plan of action to address them.

Initial findings can also provide useful information to those working in the field. For example, urban planners can use the study results to better understand the needs of Latinx communities and find ways to creatively design communities. Medical professionals can start to prepare for an increase in Latinx patients in their practices, as these groups continue to migrate into rural communities, or use the study to help advocate on behalf of their patients for better living and working conditions.

This study extends Fernandez’s research on how the lack of access to green spaces can affect the health outcomes of Latinx communities. Her dissertation on using the non-profit sector to advance social and environmental justice received the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration’s 2016 Best Paper Award. Other research activities have included projects on the programmatic aspects limiting Latinx participation in a recreation center, the development of life skills in Latinx youth and the cultural competence youth leaders need in order to address challenges arising from an increasingly diverse society.

Related: Office of Hispanic Outreach at Clemson University

Clemson Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management (PRTM) faculty and graduate students were recently invited to South Africa to share their expertise, research human/wildlife experiences in Africa’s longest standing national park and explore new potential collaborations.

The group, led by Department Chair Wayne Freimund and consisting of Associate Chair Lori Dickes, faculty members Lauren Duffy and Aby Sene-Harper, and graduate students E’Lisha Fogle and Temitope Arogundade, took part in the Insaka international research symposium about how Africa can best meet the multiple societal and ecological challenges that come with transformative conservation, conducted a visitor research project for Kruger National Park and explored the possibility of a promising new collaborative project focused on Garden Route National Park.

The Insaka Symposium

The Insaka Symposium brought together experts in a wide variety of disciplines, such as social science, tourism, human rights, community development and environmental science to try to better understand and address rapid social and ecological changes in South Africa. According to Freimund, the multidisciplinary makeup of the group provides a richer and more thorough understanding of challenges throughout the country.

“South Africa’s conservation issues are complex, multidimensional and require all hands on deck, with everyone working together to find workable solutions,” says Freimund. “It’s rewarding to work as part of a collective of international leaders in their fields, collaborating on possible solutions we can share with the country’s decision makers.”

Most of the team presented at the symposium, with Freimund and Dickes delivering keynote speeches. Their presentations shared findings from research conducted by the department in national parks throughout the United States and parts of Africa, and applied those learnings to a South African context. PRTM’s different areas of focus, including parks, community recreation, youth development, tourism and public administration, makes it well-suited to address the rapidly evolving social and ecological challenges the region is facing.

“We had a great scientific exchange and social capital building experience at the symposium, with the collective experiencing the breadth and depth of what Clemson had to offer and how a department like ours can fit into these large-scale problems in a constructive way,” continued Freimund.

The collective is now working together to apply for a National Science Foundation network collaboration grant involving the Insaka Consortia, Clemson and Montana universities, and potentially the University of Botswana, the Nelson Mandela University and other African partners. The grant proposal is focused on the Kafue River basin in Zambia, part of the Kavango-Zambezi (KAZA) Trans Frontier Park, which is the largest in the world.

Kruger National Park

After the symposium, the PRTM group traveled to Kruger National Park, one of the longest standing parks in Africa, to develop a study on challenges associated with human interaction with wildlife.

International and domestic tourism to the park is increasing, which brings a number of opportunities to the region, but also creates a tension between the park’s natural space and the humans wanting to experience it. Wildlife is migratory, making it difficult to create experiences for tourists. Human interaction can also pose challenges when animals feel at risk.

The group conducted research in the park to get a sense of wildlife interactions from a visitor’s perspective, and to better understand the complexities – and possible solutions for – human and wildlife experiences over time. The group is developing an app-based experience sampling method, where visitors send data throughout the day during their visit that describes where they are, what they are doing, how they feel about it, their perceived quality of their experience, among other questions. This will give researchers a better understanding of how to better manage incidents and create a better code of ethics for visitors, while also taking steps to enhance their visitor experience.

“Right now, the visitor experience at the park is based on the luck of the draw. For example, you could have an awesome experience of nature if your car drives beside a lion next to the road, or you could stumble into a long traffic jam if dozens of people get there before you,” says Freimund. “The first is a very positive experience. The second isn’t. Developing a visitor app for the park can help flag some of these issues and help help us better understand how the positive and negative episodes affect the overall experience and impression of the park.”

Garden Route National Park

The group’s final visit was to Garden Route National Park, near the town of George, where they explored the possibility of a new research collaboration with the Sustainability Research Unit at Nelson Mandela University, the Knsyna Basin Project and South Africa National Parks.

The group is exploring a number of key opportunities and challenges facing the park and region, such as municipal park development, tourism as an economic generator, youth development and conservation.

“The area’s national parks are open access, similar to national forests throughout the United States,” says Freimund. “There are opportunities to help visitors explore the health and cultural benefits of nature and expand the park’s recreational use and community engagement, while also managing its conservation. We have a great deal of experience in managing those issues, making a partnership a good fit.”

After a successful first meeting, the collective is working together to explore potential opportunities for collaboration, including research projects, student and faculty exchanges and a possible visit to Clemson. The group has struck a committee to look for ways to facilitate an exchange moving forward.

Watch the video below for more pictures of the group’s experiences!

Clemson Graduate Student Uses an Innovative Research Approach to Understand the Lives of Marginalized Persons in the Global South

Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, responsible for the creation of one in five new jobs over the last five years, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Most of those jobs are occupied by women, including in Africa. That said, job opportunities for men and women vary throughout the African continent, says E’Lisha Fogle, a doctoral student with the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management program at Clemson University, with gender dynamics playing a role.

“A woman’s experience in the tourism industry throughout Africa is affected by underlying societal, cultural and political influences that affect how, where and when she could be involved in – and constrained by – tourism,” Fogle says.

Past research on gender and tourism in Africa has primarily focused on entrepreneurship, empowerment and other community-based initiatives involving women. Although those are important perspectives, Fogle is applying a different approach to understanding constraints to women’s participation in tourism and its related industries.

Fogle is analyzing these relationships through collective memory work, a research tool that addresses power structures, hegemony and inequality, with a goal of emancipation through discourse analysis. Members of the collective are able to deconstruct their own narratives, which, in Fogle’s research, also creates a safe space for personal growth and empowerment. Fogle believes this approach can play an integral role towards gender equality in the Global South, which includes most countries in Africa, Central and Latin America, Asia and some countries in Europe.

“Collective memory work is still emerging in Africa as a tourism research tool, as there are fewer women of color investigating these phenomena from an academic perspective,” says Fogle. “As a result, it has been relatively underutilized as a method to understanding issues affecting women in tourism spaces.”

Fogle spent a month in Livingstone, Zambia, between December 2018 to January 2019, with a group of six participants recognized by the collective memory work methodology as co-researchers. Fogle served as the group scholar with five female community members.  Together, they used collective memory work to explore how gender could constrain female participation in the tourism industry. Her goal is to apply a new layer to existing research that can be used to help encourage confidence in the workplace among women and lead to better opportunities, both in and beyond the industry.

Fogle’s faculty advisor, Dr. Lauren Duffy, says that E’Lisha’s work focuses on an important topic that needs our attention. “Ensuring women have access to the tourism industry as a source of employment and income is vital in terms of providing the means for economic and social independence,” Duffy says. “E’Lisha’s research is pushing new boundaries methodologically and having a direct impact on the people and organizations she’s working with.”

Fogle’s impact on the Livingstone community goes beyond her academic research. Before she left for Livingstone last December, she raised $1,300 that was divided equally among six local organizations to purchase equipment and supplies, education materials and uniforms, and health and hygiene products for women and children.

Dollars were also used to address critical facility needs – for example, financial support provided to the Baobuyu Learning Center, which provides free schooling to young children in the Mwandi area, covered their water, sewage and electricity costs for an entire year, while also helping them prepare their roof for upcoming maintenance work. Kwathu Children’s Home, which operates an orphanage and free community school, was able to purchase food supplies for the first quarter of the year.

Fogle’s philanthropic efforts were supported by the Conservation and Tourism Society in Livingstone, with Society member Jacob Kampindu facilitating the relationships between Fogle and the participating organizations.

“It’s important to me to ensure that my research in Africa does more than benefit me as a scholar,” says Fogle. “The dollars we were able to raise provided direct, and immediate, benefits to the communities sharing their knowledge and insight with me, while also raising awareness of their work here in Clemson.”

Fogle is now back in Africa sharing her collective memory work research approach at two major tourism conferences – at the ATLAS Africa conference in Uganda, which explores innovations in tourism, and the Insaka 2019 Symposium in South Africa, focusing on transformative conservation. She’s hoping her presentations will raise awareness and encourage the use of collective memory work in tourism research.

“Understanding gender constraints to female participation in the tourism industry is critical, given the number of women working in the field. The collective memory work approach provides invaluable new insight into what opportunities and challenges women working in tourism are facing,” says Fogle. “My hope is that the more we share information about this research technique, the more female African researchers will begin to see the value in using it.”

Research on First Day Hike Participants Examines Hiker Motivations

Kristen Grissom enjoys the peacefulness that comes with long walks in remote places. An avid hiker, she can often be found on the trails several days a week after work and on weekends.

“I enjoy the freedom of it and the feeling of satisfaction after spending a day in the woods and conquering a difficult trail,” Kristen says. “My family does not enjoy hiking though, so I go on my own or with friends, if possible.”

Kristen is among 45 million Americans aged six and older that went hiking last year, with per capita participation increasing steadily over the past decade. Day hiking is consistently ranked as one of the most popular recreation activities in the United States for adults and children, making it an important marketing and management consideration for local, state, and national parks. However, although we know people enjoy the act of hiking, we know less about why they choose to hike, particularly among different sociodemographic groups.

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Clemson University recently conducted a research project to find out who hikes, why, and how those motivations might vary among different groups of people. Results were recently published in the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration.

“Most of the research we have seen to date has focused on the environmental impacts of hikers and visitor use management along trails,” says Sarah Wilcer, interpretive park ranger at Grand Teton National Park, who led this research project while earning her master’s degree at Clemson University. “Few studies have focused specifically on the motivations of hikers – what gets them out, how they decide where to go, and who they prefer to hike with, even though these are important resource management and marketing considerations for park leaders.”

The study focused on First Day Hikes on January 1, 2016, in three state park systems that were among the top 10 in terms of the total number of first day hikers in 2016: Georgia, Massachusetts, and South Carolina. Before they started their hike, adult park visitors were asked to complete a questionnaire that asked if it was their first hike or first experience at a park site, the size of their group and who they were with, and why they chose that specific hike. Respondents were also asked to provide their zip code to gauge the distance travelled to the park.

In all, the study sampled a total of 114 first day hikes, with group sizes ranging from 2 people to more than 300 participants on the most crowded hikes, and about two-thirds of the hikes taken were classified as “easy” by hike leaders. About 60% of respondents were participants on their first-ever First Day Hike, though almost all of them had already been on other hiking experiences. The majority of respondents also identified as Caucasian and were highly educated.

Overall findings demonstrated that different groups of people do, in fact, hike for different reasons. First time hikers, for example, were more likely to hike to try something new, while older participants were more likely to hike for exercise. Groups with children wanted to spend time together. The most popular reason, however, was to enjoy time in nature.

Other motivations included the uniqueness of the day and hike location. For example, female hikers were more likely than male hikers to be motivated to hike by the First Day Hike event, and close hikes were also preferred destinations for those coming to celebrate the New Year. Hikers choosing moderate or strenuous hikes further from home, however, were more likely to be motivated by trying something new.

“Our results show that different groups of hikers are seeking different types of recreation experiences, which provides valuable insight to park managers creating trails or marketing opportunities,” says Lincoln Larson, Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. “If managers know who is using their trails and how far they are traveling to reach them, they can influence use patterns or create new trails with hikers’ needs in mind.”

The group is considering future research to build on the study results. “The study’s findings demonstrate that park managers can market and manage day hikes as a way to improve health, strengthen social bonds, connect with nature, and learn and experience new things in novel settings, but there’s much more we can learn about underrepresented groups,” said Jeff Hallo, Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator for Clemson University’s Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management department. “This research serves as a base we can build on to explore and contrast motivations of other groups, including those who may not have been on a hike yet, but would consider it.” Faculty at Clemson University are currently seeking graduate students – both in their online and on-campus M.S. and Ph.D. programs – to study and explore these topics and other current issues in park management.