ABSTRACT
Outdoor recreation has long been a part of the New Zealand psyche, forged through deep connections to place among both the nation’s indigenous people and its more recent settlers, whose associations with the vast, dynamic and largely uninhabited landscapes nurtured self-reliance, physical and intellectual challenge and a reverence for nature. It was these values, fortified by a burgeoning system of national parks and protected area, and facilitation of recreation experiences by government agencies, that underpinned active recreational use of the “great outdoors” until the latter half of the twentieth century. Since then, recreation has expanded exponentially, yet has received only intermittent attention from scholars in recent decades. Signals abound that New Zealanders’ traditional outdoor recreation patterns are set for disruption. Against this backdrop of omnipresent change, this chapter examines a range of current and potential “disrupters” and explores the contemporary and future implications for outdoor recreation in Aotearoa New Zealand. The chapter concludes with a research agenda aimed to focus scholarly attention on understanding the nature, scale and scope of these disruptions which arguably represent some of the biggest challenges for researchers in this field.
