‘Swings and roundabouts’: a case study of trends in outdoor recreation participation in South East Queensland

Abstract

This paper contributes to our understanding of contemporary outdoor recreation trends, particularly to the debate on the so called pervasive decline in outdoor recreation as measured by visitation to parks or protected areas in many countries over the past 10 to 15 years. This study focused on Australia's fastest growing metropolitan region, South East Queensland, and has used three outdoor recreation demand studies to compare outdoor recreation participation rates for people living in this region from 1998 to 2007. The study found that there has been a decline in the participation rates of several outdoor recreation activities, but also an increase in a small number of other activities. However, population growth contributed to an increase in the number of people undertaking outdoor recreation overall, despite the declining per capita participation rates in most activities surveyed.