Key Scottish Environment Statistics 2013

Outdoor Visits: 2006 - 2012

Percentage of adults making visits to the outdoors¹⁰

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 Indicator¹¹ to increase the proportion of adults making one or more visits to the outdoors per week. During 2012, 42% of adults are estimated to have visited the outdoors one or more times per week, compared to 46% in 2011, 48% in 2010 and 44% in 2006. 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. There are a great variety of factors and influences for the level of outdoor recreation and reasons such as the wet Spring and Summer months and the Olympics in 2012 may have resulted in less people visiting the outdoors.

In 2012, 15% of adults made 1 or 2 visits to the outdoors per month, with 42% visiting less often than that, and 12% visiting the outdoors at least once a day. The number of people visiting the outdoors once every two or three months or less in 2012 was the highest percentage seen in this survey (42%).

Source: Scottish Natural Heritage - Scottish Recreation Survey / Metadata