Cassandra Y. Johnson

Coming to Terms with Environmental Justice in Outdoor Recreation: A Conceptual Discussion with Research Implications

Much of the research on environmental justice centers on environmental hazards. This article offers an overview of the emergence of environmental justice issues in outdoor recreation management and research. The authors argue that a major challenge to future research on environmental justice in outdoor recreation is clarifying definitions of environmental justice and generating awareness of the different dimensions of environmental justice. The authors also examine recent empirical studies of environmental justice issues related to outdoor recreation and other resource amenities. Based on an overview of the literature and these recent studies, the authors set forth some broad outlines to guide future research.

Wildland recreation in the Rural South: An examination of marginality and ethnicity theory.

The ethnicity and marginality explanations of minority recreation participation provide the conceptual basis for our inquiry. These theories are examined for a sample of rural African Americans and...

Wilderness Values in America: Does Immigrant Status or Ethnicity Matter?

Little is known about the values immigrant groups or U.S.-born racial and ethnic minorities attribute to wilderness. However, the views of these groups are important to wilderness preservation because of increasing diversity along ethnic, cultural, and racial lines in the United States. We examine the proposition that wilderness is a social construction (valued primarily by U.S.-born Whites) by comparing wilderness values for immigrants and U.S.-born minority respondents to Whites. Results from 10 wilderness value items show immigrants are significantly less likely to indicate on-site use value. Among U.S.-born racial/ethnic groups, Black respondents were least likely to indicate values associated with visitation and off-site use but as likely as Whites to indicate a value for continued existence of wilderness. U.S.-born Asians and Latinos were also less likely than Whites to indicate values relating to wilderness on-site use. Implications of findings for wilderness as social construction are discussed.

Theoretical Perspectives of Ethnicity and Outdoor Recreation: A Review and Synthesis of African-American and European-American Participation

For over three decades, research has shown differences in recreation participation by ethnic group membership, particularly for African Americans and European Americans. This paper is the first of a two-part publication series that examines black/white recreation. In this first part, the literature and empirical findings on black/white leisure participation are reviewed. The implications of generalizing region-specific theories and findings of black/white participation to populations in various parts of the country are discussed. Finally, implications for forest managers and future research needs are presented.