Key Scottish Environment Statistics 2012

Outdoor Visits: 2006 - 2011

Percentage of adults making visits to the outdoors per week^[10]

Outdoor recreation is beneficial for health and well-being. It also provides opportunities for people to come into contact with, and increase their understanding of, the natural environment. Although outdoor recreation has multiple motivations, this indicator provides a useful measure of the numbers of people who gain benefit and enjoyment from nature and biodiversity and improve their understanding of the importance and functioning of the natural environment.

The Scottish Government has established a National Indicator^[11] to increase the proportion of adults making one or more visits to the outdoors per week. During 2011, 46% of adults are estimated to have visited the outdoors one or more times per week, compared to 48% in 2010 and 46% in 2009. This data is taken from the Scottish Recreation Survey where respondents were asked how often on average they had made a visit to the outdoors for leisure and recreation in Scotland in the last 12 months.

In 2011, 17% of adults made 1 or 2 visits to the outdoors per month, with 38% visiting less often than that, and 13% visiting the outdoors more than once a day. The number of people visiting the outdoors less often than once or twice a month was lower in 2010 and 2011 (35% and 38%) than it had been for the first 3 years of the survey.

Source: Scottish Natural Heritage - Scottish Recreation Survey / Metadata