‘Nature lovers’, ‘Social animals’, ‘Quiet seekers’ and ‘Activity lovers’: Participation of young adult immigrants and non-immigrants in outdoor recreation in the Netherlands

Immigrants are often described as ‘under-participating’ in non-urban outdoor recreation. Our quantitative study among 1057 young adults of Chinese, Turkish and non-immigrant descent in the Netherlands, however, showed strong differences in outdoor recreational behaviour between and within ethnic groups. Participation frequency, participation rate, group size and motivations strongly varied between ethnic groups. In our study, a similar share of Turkish immigrants and non-immigrants recreated in non-urban greenspace, while half as many Chinese immigrants did so. Respondents of Turkish descent mainly participated in group-based activities and respondents of Chinese descent in individual-based activities. Respondents subjectively perceived their ethnicity but also personal identities, age and, to a lesser extent, gender and religion to influence their outdoor recreational behaviour. Cluster analysis of participants in non-urban outdoor recreation resulted in five recreational types: ‘Nature lovers’, ‘Social animals’, ‘Activity lovers’, ‘Group-based quiet seekers’ and ‘Individual quiet seekers’. These recreational types were correlated with ethnicity, but also with various other socio-demographic variables. We therefore argue that ‘under-participation’ is a misleading term to typify non-urban outdoor recreational behaviour of immigrants, and that multiple identities should be taken into account to understand this behaviour.Management implications
• The ambition of forest and nature management should be to involve ethnic groups in planning and decision making for outdoor recreation and nature conservation and to enable various cultural uses of greenspace, instead of fighting presumed under-participation.
• Differentiating between ethnic groups is crucial for understanding diverging outdoor recreational patterns. Forest and nature managers who wish to reach out to immigrants should therefore adapt their strategies depending on the ethnic group(s) concerned.
• Other identities besides their ethnicity also influence immigrants' outdoor recreational behaviour, such as age and gender. This provides opportunities to stimulate immigrants' participation.
• A clear relation between outdoor recreational participation and support for nature conservation was not found among the immigrants in our study. This suggests that stimulating outdoor recreation among immigrants does not lead to more public support for nature conservation.