September 07, 2014
I’m a big fan of nature and hiking, but that number doesn’t sound quite right to me. The Washington Post had an article on the recreation business in which it told readers that the country spends $646 billion a year on outdoor recreation and related spending. This figures comes to a bit more than $2,000 per person. If we assume that half of the public doesn’t really do anything that fits the bill, then this means the other half spend $4,000 per person per year on outdoor recreation. That comes to $16,000 per year for a family of four.
Let’s see, you can a pretty nice tent for a few hundred dollars, hiking boots can cost $150-$200, a good sleeping bag in the same range. That could get us to $700, but of course you don’t buy these things every year. If you assume they last an average of 3-4 years, these items will only get you about $200 per year, less than one twentieth of the way to our $4,000 target.
According to the article, the $646 billion figure came from an industry group. The link does not go to a report that could explain how they got the number, but rather a map showing a state by state breakdown. It’s not clear how the industry group came up with its number, but it’s virtually certain they included many items that most of us would not consider spending on outdoor recreation. The Post should be a bit more careful in uncritically accepting numbers from industry groups.
Correction:
Robert Salzberg points me to a link later in the piece that goes to the study itself. The study shows that the bulk of its $646 billion in spending is based on food, entertainment, lodging, and travel related expenses. This presumably means that if someone flies across country to visit family members and also goes to a national park then the study would count the air fare and the money spent on lodging throughout their trip. The study does not describe the methodology in full, but it does give a non-working URL as the location of a technical report.
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