Practical 7--

Recreation Opportunity Spectrum:
Self-test of the concept

In-class survey

Personal experience and expectations:

How many days was it?

What accommodation would be chosen?

How many in the party?

How many miles from home?

Approximate $$$ spent per person?

What is your preference for each category of recreation?

What % of your annual budget goes to each category?

LA 341 Fall 1998

The basic idea behind ROS is that people should be provided with a range of recreation opportunities so that individual tastes can be appropriately accommodated. The important "spectrums" represented in the ROS include the following:

Setting: a range of settings available ranging from primitive undeveloped areas, largely natural, to urban areas with much human modification. The full range is: Primitive, Semi-primitive non-motorized, Semi-primitive motorized, Roaded natural, Rural, Urban
Activity: activities available from remote hiking to organized and intense recreation activities.
Experience: a range from opportunities for isolation and a high degree of challenge to others where people can mix freely and there is little challenge in the recreational experiences afforded.
Remoteness: some settings distant from roads, others immediately accessible from all kinds of transportation.
Evidence of humans: places where humans and structures are rarely seen and others where many people gather and the environment is extensively structured.
Social setting: opportunities to avoid people and the signs of people ranging to sharing facilities with large numbers of others.

Managerial setting: some areas will be free of evidence of management restrictions, others will be clearly marked with directions and facilities to support and define use.

The class undertook a survey to investigate their own experiences and expectations regarding Primitive recreation, and an investigation of how they would allocate their own resources to different parts of the ROS.

The questions in this section generally followed the format:

Thinking of the concept of ROS, what has been your most "primitive" recreation experience? ... and what was the most important experience?

... and asked respondents to describe the expoerience, then give numerical estimates for the following:

How many days was it? .............
What accommodation? .............
How many in the party? .............
Miles from home? .............
Approximate $$$/person? .............

The full range of questions, themselves picked to represent a "spectrum" of user expectations, was as follows:

What is the most "primitive" experience you hope to do someday? ... and what experience is it you're seeking?

Thinking of the concept of ROS, what has been your most "primitive" recreation experience? ... and what was the most important experience?

Thinking of your parent/s, what has been their most "primitive" recreation experience? ... and what experience do you think they were seeking?

Assume you are going to visit a top-ranked National Park, here or overseas -- Where would you go and what would you expect to experience?

Assume you are going to take a "traditional" beach resort vacation -- Where would you go and what would you expect to experience?

The responses of the 22 people present in class were compiled in an Excel spreadsheet and the results charted to show relationships between the five spectrum questions above for each of the detail questions:

primitive	semi-p, no motors	semi-p, motors	roaded nat'l	rural	urban
27	17	14	16	13	13

desired primitive

self primitive

parents' primitive

self national park

self beach resort

primitive	semi-p, no motors	semi-p, motors	roaded nat'l	rural	urban
23	15	10	16	14	20