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KEYWORDS: Specialization, recreation, conflicts, management
The essence of specialization theory, first published in The journal of Leisure Research in 1977 (Bryan) and subsequently expanded in a 1979 monograph (Bryan), is that outdoor recreation participants can be placed on a continuum from general interest and low involvement to specialized interest and high involvement. Each level of specialization carries distinctive behave iors and orientations. These include equipment preference, type of experience sought, desired setting for the activity, attitudes toward resource management, preferred social context, even vacation patterns. Subsequent testing and refinement of the theory and its applications over more than two decades created a substantial literature on the topic. Researchers added to the body of knowledge through their studies and insights and led productive debate on the theory's accuracy, power, and applicability. Doing justice to this literature in a few pages would be a daunting, if not an impossible, task. I myself have done little subsequent work on the topic since framing it, other than using the specialization perspective in teaching and as a tangential concept in other areas of work. What can be done in this space, however, is to share a few reflections on the origins of the theory and its formulation and thoughts on applicability to other areas. Perhaps this will point to research directions and. stimulate wider application in the new century ahead.
Background and Origins of Specialization Theory
Impetus for the theory came from realization of the typically low correlation between leisure activity variables and standard sociological variables, as well as difficulty reconciling what I was reading and teaching and what I was seeing in the field. Days in the field were those of an ardent angler plying the waters of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming every summer. I experienced first-hand such traditional conflicts as those between hikers and offroad vehicle users, canoeists and power boaters, anglers and rafters. But I was especially struck by conflicts within groups, particularly trout fishermen, as they clashed among themselves over the appropriateness of "catch-andrelease" and "fly-fishing only" regulations, stream etiquette, and a host of other issues. My own membership in the angling fraternity made me aware of large differences in orientations and behaviors among these anglers. These seemed to be related in some way to...