WILDLAND RECREATION IN THE RURAL SOUTH - AN EXAMINATION OF MARGINALITY AND ETHNICITY THEORY

The ethnicity and marginality explanations of minority recreation part icipation provide the conceptual basis for our inquiry. These theories are examined for a sample of rural African Americans and whites. Usin g logistic regression, we test for black and white differences in: I) visitation to wildland areas in general; 2) visitation to National For est wildland areas; and 3) household visitation to the Apalachicola Na tional Forest. Next, we test the marginality/ethnicity paradigm by exa mining reasons for non-visitation and latent demand for visitation. Ou r findings show that race, sex, and age as well as a race/poor (poor b lack) interaction term are strong predictors of visitation. However, r ace appears to be less effective in predicting reasons for non-visitat ion and latent demand for wildland visitation. Overall, results do not provide strong support for either ethnicity or marginality as a sole explicator of racial differences in wildland recreation. Rather, resul ts indicate that the two probably work in combination to explain racia l differences. The poor black interaction also suggests that rural bla ck visitation to wildlands varies depending upon income, with less aff luent blacks actually participating more than those with higher income s. This contradicts the marginality assertion that recreation particip ation varies positively with income and suggests that marginality theo ry may need to be qualified depending upon residence (rural versus urb an) and type of activity.