PURISM REVISITED - SPECIFYING RECREATIONAL CONDITIONS OF CONCERN ACCORDING TO RESOURCE INTENT

Understanding differences in recreational users, activities, and resou rce choices is essential to balanced management of outdoor recreation resources. Measures of purism purism (one's attitudinal orientation to ward an ideal) facilitate this understanding for wilderness recreation but have been superseded by the related concept of recreation special ization. Purism is revisited to determine if it is still useful in und erstanding differences in recreationists. Stankey's (1972) Purism scal e and specific wilderness condition measures were administered by ques tionnaire to recreational users of a designated wilderness. Results in dicated that purism was significantly related to different levels of c oncern for wilderness condition domains defined as human impacts, natu ral features, solitude, management confinement, and primitive travel c onditions. It was concluded that measuring the alignment of one's atti tudes with intended resources and their use is essential to understand ing attitudinal aspects of recreational experiences and aids recreatio n management in wilderness