CONVENTIONS, EMERGING NORMS, AND NORMS IN OUTDOOR RECREATION

Conventions, emerging norms, and norms are different ways that social life becomes ordered and regularized, and they make the social worlds of outdoor recreation knowable and predictable. These concepts represe nt a continuum of social regularities that is illustrated through the development of an evaluative model based generally on Jackson's (1996) return potential model. Social conventions are open behaviors based o n common expectations and preferences, and social norms are behaviors bounded by obligations that are enforced through sanctions. When conve ntions become so important that more and more people see them as oblig ations, a social norm may be said to be emerging. Data are presented f rom a study of multiple-use bike trail users who responded to both nor mative and non-normative preference statements about bike trail behavi ors. The normative preferences were contained in a 1993 questionnaire, and the non-normative preferences concerning the same behaviors were contained in a 1994 questionnaire. For some of the behaviors, differen ces were found in normative and non-normative responses. To clarify wh ether preferences are more normative or more non-normative, a question naire format is suggested in which bath normative and nan-normative pr eferences are included.