Stress and Coping in Recreational Settings: Understanding Causes and Strategies - Prof. Ed, Study notes of Humanities

Download Stress and Coping in Recreational Settings: Understanding Causes and Strategies - Prof. Ed and more Study notes Humanities in PDF only on Docsity! STRESS & COPING CSS 287 2 What happens when the Actual ≠ Ideal? How do recreationists deal with situations where their actual experience does not meet their prior expectations? Overcrowding Low Satisfaction Recreational Conflicts They feel stress! 3 Stress Stress: is defined as an unavoidable negative person-environment relationship (Lazarus, 2001) 3 Types of Stress: 1) Prior Harm, damage realized from past experiences; 2) Threat, anticipated harm; and 3) Challenge, difficulties dealing with demands. www.ertra.com 4 Causes of Stress: Low Satisfaction Satisfaction: is a positive or negative attitude formed after experiencing a situation Discrepancy Model of Satisfaction says: Consumers have preexisting expectations, before they participate, They compare the performance to their expectations They ask if preexisting expectations were confirmed or disconfirmed, and then make a satisfaction judgment www.fs.fed.us 5 Causes of Stress: Crowding Overcrowding causes feelings of unpleasantness Loss of privacy Loss of perceived control Physiological arousal Sensory overload www.azwild.org / Kim Crumbo 6 Causes of Stress: Recreation Conflict Recreation Conflict is defined as goal interference attributed to another’s behavior Occurs when the behavior of another group or individual causes dissatisfaction hiddentrails.com www.wildwilderness.org 7 Coping Coping: the process of altering our circumstances, or our interpretation of circumstances, to make them appear more favorable (Lazarus, 2001) 8 Coping Strategies Problem-focused (external), where an individual changes the person-environment relationship for the better Emotion-focused (internal), where an individual changes the way they interpret a situation to make it seem more favorable “Both strategies are interdependent and work together, one supplementing the other in the overall coping process” (Lazarus, 2001). 9 Causes of Stress and Coping Mechanisms Recreation Conflict Crowding Anything Detracting or Dissatisfying Stress Change Environment Absolute Displacement Temporal Substitution Resource Substitution Cognitive Adjustment Adapted from Miller & McCool 2003 High Stress Moderate Stress Low Stress 10 Product Shift: has been defined as a redefinition of the experience or standards of importance. Levels of Specificity: 1) redefining the experience; and 2) redefining the importance Example: “This probably is not a wilderness experience, but it’s a beautiful hiking-camping experience.” Cognitive Adjustments 11 Cognitive Adjustments Rationalization: is defined as “a process whereby recreationists re-evaluate an undesirable situation in a more favorable light” (Hammitt & Patterson, 1991) “Everyone is surprised at the crowds launching on the Grand Canyon, but they quickly accept it and are overwhelmed by the scale of the rapids & the canyon scenery!” Trade-off: individual prioritizes certain key aspects of the experience and is willing to make concessions to preserve a higher order priority Which coping method is chosen depends on the individual. personality, controllability, history of experience, place attachment, etc. 12 Substitution as a Coping Strategy 1) Location: Spatial Displacement Different location within a resource (intra-site) Choose a completely different resource (inter-site) 2) Time: Temporal Displacement Recreating during times of non-peak use: different seasons, days of the week, time of day, etc. 3) Activity Substituting one activity for another Less common than spatial or temporal displacement Some combination of the above is typical, and choice once again depends on the characteristics of the individual.