Abstract:

With European Conservation year not long over and with a revitalised interest on the part of administrators, planners and journalists in the environment it is rewarding to review the survey research that has been done in one area that is so closely related to environment, that is recreation and leisure. Besides this we shall be considering the evaluation of available leisure time, in simple quantitative and in more complex economic terms, because such evaluation seems necessary to provide our administrators with more and better data upon which to make decisions, particularly in view of the apparent expansion in leisure activities and recent increase in time available over the last decades in Europe. As an aside, we should like to hear in mind the developing nations in this discussion for most of them are also faced with changes in leisure time and patterns of leisure activity as part of the changing face of their society, and in certain ways these charges are probably more profound in these countries. The concepts and arguments discussed in this paper are adaptable to situations outside Western Europe and North America. Though we shall discuss several leisure and recreation surveys the discussion will centre on the national survey of angling which was recently published and which was the first major national demand study of a specific recreational activity in Britain.