BETWEEN REAL CONSTRAINTS AND LEISURE PARTICIPATION

In the past decade an increasing amount of leisure research has been d evoted to the negative effects of constraints on behaviour. In this st udy constraints were looked at from the perspective of the Rational Ch oice Theory. Furthermore, our study focused on patterns of constraints . Respondents were classified according to the constraints that they c onsidered relevant to their participation in outdoor recreation. The f irst question was whether or not there might be a relationship between the perceived constraint pattern and present outdoor recreational beh aviour. The second question was to what degree the perceived constrain t pattern could be traced back to the social-structural condition of t he respondent. An empirical study among 1970 respondents showed that t he perceived constraint pattern was indeed related to present behaviou r. Furthermore, the perceived constraint clusters differed in several social-structural characteristics. However, these characteristics did not predict cluster membership very well. Further analysis showed that the predicted classification, using social-structural characteristics , was more informative with regard to outdoor recreational behaviour t han the actual classification. Although not predicted, this finding is in accordance with the Rational Choice Theory, in which real rather t han perceived constraints are hypothesized to influence behaviour.