Behavioural insights for responsible outdoor recreation in Ireland

The Behaviouralist collaborated with Comhairle na Tuaithe (CnT)- the Irish Countryside Council- to understand and improve the behaviour of recreational users of the outdoors. The aim of this research was to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence recreationists and provide recommendations to encourage, enable, and enforce responsible behaviour in the outdoors. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing numbers of people have discovered Ireland’s beautiful outdoors, engaging in recreational activities like hiking, kayaking, and mountain biking. In parallel, Ireland has seen a rise in first-time dog ownership. While these trends offer notable mental and physical benefits for those who partake in them, they have also led to increased instances of irresponsible behaviour, with users and their dogs posing threats to wildlife and farm animals, the environment, and themselves.

Ireland’s national outdoor recreation strategy aims ‘to change user behaviour so that all users embrace and enjoy access in a respectful manner and are fully aware of their personal responsibilities.’ (Embracing Ireland’s Outdoors, p. 45). As a first step to achieve this objective, The Behaviouralist was commissioned by Sport Ireland and the Department of Rural and Community Development (DRCD) on behalf of Comhairle na Tuaithe to produce a report summarising the evidence base on this issue from a behavioural perspective and outline actionable recommendations to inform future communications, signage, infrastructure and policy development.

 Our approach

In collaboration with CnT’s responsible behaviour sub-group, we identified three categories of behaviour to focus our research on: environment-related, dog-related, and safety-related. Specific behaviours included correctly disposing of waste, picking up after dogs and keeping them on a leash where necessary, sticking to paths and trails, and taking safety precautions.

We systematically reviewed academic and grey literature as well as behavioural science frameworks to gain insights on:

• The knowledge and attitudes of Irish recreationalists
• The psychological, social and structural factors influencing behaviour in the outdoors.
• Interventions that have been implemented in Ireland and other countries, and how effective these have been.
  

Tailoring our findings to Ireland’s unique context

A challenge of this work was ensuring its relevance to Ireland’s specific context. Whereas in most countries the public has a ‘right to roam’ on common land, almost all land in Ireland is privately owned, and access is permitted through the goodwill of landowners. As a result, irresponsible behaviour can have severe consequences for landowners. Consultations with the Irish Farming Association, Mountaineering Ireland, Leave No Trace Ireland, and other members of the CnT helped us understand the unique cultural and legal context of Irish land.

Influences on behaviour in the outdoors 

Our research highlighted several important influences on user behaviour in the outdoors. For example:

• Gaps in awareness and unintentional irresponsibility: Knowledge gaps are common, with recreationists either not realising that their behaviour is irresponsible, or not being aware of the severity of its consequences.
• Weak social norms and solitary activities: We typically derive important clues about how to behave from observing others, but the remote nature of outdoor recreation means that this is often not possible. This also reduces the social pressure to comply with norms and weakens the threat of enforcement.
• Contrast between adventure mindset and appealing actions: There is a psychological clash between the carefree nature of outdoor recreation and the need to act responsibly, which can involve performing unpleasant actions (like picking up dog waste).
  

Recommendations to create responsible behaviour  

Based on our extensive research, we developed evidence based recommendations to change behaviour in the outdoors. The recommendations are organised into three categories (see below) based on the different intervention modes and levers available.. Different intervention categories will be more or less appropriate for targeting various types of recreationists - from the unaware, to the unengaged, to the wilfully irresponsible.

• Encourage: Create communications that persuade people to behave responsibly. Strategies to achieve this include informing and educating users, personalising and humanising messages, making nature feel more familiar, and appealing to positive emotions. 
• Enable: Design physical interventions that make it easier for users to behave responsibly. This includes modelling the desired behaviour, and improving infrastructure such as providing bins or dog waste bags where feasible.
• Enforce: Use legal measures to establish and enforce behaviours. This aims to reduce ambiguity and increase adherence. However, the difficulty of monitoring individuals can hamper compliance amongst certain users. Therefore, it is important to make enforcement evident to increase users' perceptions of its prevalence.

What's next...? 

Comhairle na Tuaithe has already begun using the findings from our report to create a communications campaign aimed at behaviour change. The next step is to turn the recommendations into interventions and test them digitally or in the field to build up the evidence base for the Irish context and scale best practices. In addition, our research highlights the importance of early years and adult education on this topic, and gamified tools, like The Waste Game, have great potential to deliver this.