Missourians Watch Programs on TV About the Outdoors

In a survey where 6,352 Missourians responded, 80 percent of the individuals indicated that they had participated in the last 12 months in watching programs on TV about the outdoors. And the number was slightly higher for households, at 82 percent.

Missourians living in the outstate areas were slightly more likely to watch programs about the outdoors than those living in Missouri's largest urban areas. Men were more likely to watch, at 86 percent, than women, at 74 percent.

Those individuals who identified themselves as hunters, anglers, and environmentalists, and those who were more familiar with the Missouri Department of Conservation, were much more likely to watch programs about the outdoors.

If the household had children in the home, they were about the same in the level of watching as those without children, and age categories were about the same, except for those over 70 who were less likely to watch compared to those of age 21 to 69 years.

And the participation in outdoor TV program watching was much higher for those with a high level of outdoor activity (93 percent) compared to the level of participation in TV watching for those with a low level of outdoor activity (61 percent).

Thinking about these numbers, the following observations and conclusions from a study about national park visits does not seem to fit with the Missouri data.

John Whitehead, an economist at Appalachian State University, writes in his blog on environmental economics:

"Is love of nature in the US becoming love of electronic media? 16-year downtrend in national park visits explained by watching movies, playing video games, internet use, and oil prices."

He was referring to a recent abstract of a study published in the Journal of Environmental Management:

"After 50 years of steady increase, per capita visits to US national parks have declined since 1988. This decline, coincident with the rise in electronic entertainment media, may represent a shift in recreation choices with broader implications for the value placed on biodiversity conservation and environmentally responsible behavior. We compared the decline in per capita visits with a set of indicators representing alternate recreation choices and constraints. The Spearman correlation analyses found this decline in NPV to be significantly negatively correlated with several electronic entertainment indicators... Multiple linear regression of four of the entertainment media variables as well as oil prices explains 97.5% of this recent decline... We may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from people's appreciation of nature (biophilia, Wilson 1984) to ‘videophilia,’ which we here define as “the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media.” Such a shift would not bode well for the future of biodiversity conservation."

From the Missouri survey, when asked to choose, 56 percent of Missourians selected outdoor activities, like hiking, camping, birdwatching, fishing, or hunting, as the activities they enjoy most, compared to reading or watching TV (34 percent) and structured sports (9 percent) like tennis, softball, or bowling.

I'll want to read the article more closely to see how the study was conducted and how those conclusions might relate to Missouri.