ABSTRACT
Understanding why human beings engage in recreational and tourism activities is an increasingly important and complex area of research for social scientists. Historically, geographers have only played a limited part in developing the literature on the behavioural aspects of recreational and tourists’ use of free time, tending to have a predisposition towards the analysis of aggregate patterns of demand using quantitative measures and statistical sources. This almost rigid demarcation of research activity has, with a few exceptions (e.g. Goodall 1990; Mansfeld 1992), meant that behavioural research in recreation and tourism has only recently made any impact on the wider research community (e.g. see Walmesley and Lewis 1993 on the geographer’s approach to behavioural research), with notable studies (e.g. Walmesley and Jenkins 1992; Jenkins and Walmesley 1993) applying spatial principles to the analysis of recreational and tourism behaviour. For this reason, this chapter discusses some of the key behavioural issues associated with recreation and tourism demand followed by an analysis of the major data sources which researchers use, emphasising how the geographer has used and manipulated them to identify the patterns, processes and implications of such activity.
