‘Nature lovers’, ‘Social animals’, ‘Quiet seekers’ and ‘Activity lovers’: Participation of young adult immigrants and non-immigrants in outdoor recreation in the Netherlands

Immigrants are often described as ‘under-participating’ in non-urban outdoor recreation. Our quantitative study among 1057 young adults of Chinese, Turkish and non-immigrant descent in the Netherlands, however, showed strong differences in outdoor recreational behaviour between and within ethnic groups. Participation frequency, participation rate, group size and motivations strongly varied between ethnic groups. In our study, a similar share of Turkish immigrants and non-immigrants recreated in non-urban greenspace, while half as many Chinese immigrants did so. Respondents of Turkish descent mainly participated in group-based activities and respondents of Chinese descent in individual-based activities. Respondents subjectively perceived their ethnicity but also personal identities, age and, to a lesser extent, gender and religion to influence their outdoor recreational behaviour. Cluster analysis of participants in non-urban outdoor recreation resulted in five recreational types: ‘Nature lovers’, ‘Social animals’, ‘Activity lovers’, ‘Group-based quiet seekers’ and ‘Individual quiet seekers’. These recreational types were correlated with ethnicity, but also with various other socio-demographic variables. We therefore argue that ‘under-participation’ is a misleading term to typify non-urban outdoor recreational behaviour of immigrants, and that multiple identities should be taken into account to understand this behaviour.