The Benefits Equation.

The Benefits approach to understanding and justifying leisure services has been a positive step for our profession. The benefits of leisure are manifold, and leisure scientists and practitioners are working diligently to document them. But we are concerned that a singular emphasis on Benefits may be blinding us to many of the negative consequences of leisure behavior. This is why, when it comes to understanding the totality of what people do in the name of leisure, Benefits are only part of the equation.

The benefits of leisure have been defined by Dr. Bev Driver and his associates as improved conditions; advantageous changes; or gains to individuals, groups, society, and other living things. In the context of Benefits-Based Management (BBM), this approach attempts to identify the benefits sought by individuals and groups, and then to provide leisure services that lead to those benefits.

The evolution of BBM has occurred over the past 30 years. In the 1950s and '60s, Activity-Based Management (ABM) emphasized numbers and varieties of leisure experiences rather than the content of those experiences. We measured success by counting the people who participated in our programs or the number of times they participated. Eventually, we found ABM insufficient for service delivery because it did not really help us understand why people did or did not participate, and we could not explain the value of their participation to city councils or to local, state, and national legislatures.

In the '70s and '80s, we turned to Experience-Based Management (EBM), exemplified by the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, which was developed in part by social scientists in the U.S. Forest Service. EBM focused on the content of the leisure experiences people were seeking and then provided facilities and programs to generate that content. Some people wanted relaxation, some excitement, some affiliation, and some solitude. But we found EBM insufficient, too, especially for community recreation, because it emphasized individual tastes and preferences independent of larger community interests. Coupled with a gradual decline in the public's willingness to support leisure services through taxes, our traditional public and merit good orientation to service delivery was modified to a considerable extent by a private good orientation. It was harder to justify leisure services as merit or public goods with EBM because government officials could say, "Why should we be catering to individual tastes and preferences? What do our communities get out of this?"

The Benefits approach of the '90s attempts to answer these questions. BBM is helping leisure service professionals identify the specific benefits that are possible through community-based recreation. It provides a straightforward approach to explaining and justifying the expenditures for community leisure services by demonstrating how such services enhance a community's welfare. In this context, BBM has been a major step in the right direction for our field. Increasingly, we are able to explain to people why what we do is important.

Our profession has fully embraced the Benefits approach. The National Recreation and Park Association has formally endorsed BBM and incorporated it into agency and college curriculum accreditation standards. State associations are sponsoring Benefits workshops; a marketing firm has a formal trademark on the slogan "The Benefits are Endless"; publishers are coming out with BBM textbooks and videotapes; federal agencies are funding large BBM research projects; articles in our professional journals are recommending BBM for managing everything from wilderness areas to urban programs for at-risk-youth; and one can purchase Benefits posters, mugs, banners, and T-shirts.

But is the current emphasis on Benefits doing justice to the big picture? In the economic arena, one must consider both benefits and costs. If the benefits outweigh the costs, then one can talk with confidence of net benefits. We should be doing the same thing in leisure services. But to do that, we must also consider the negative consequences of leisure behaviors.

Underlying Assumptions

Our line of reasoning is based upon five assumptions. First, leisure and recreation are ideals for which to strive. In their purest form, these ideals are "out there," somewhere just beyond our reach, in carefully configured potentials seldom realized. Second, what people do in the name of leisure and recreation has social consequences, both positive and negative; that is, the effect of what they do goes beyond the individual. Third, the benefits of leisure and recreation can ultimately be determined only by subtracting the negative social consequences from the positives. Benefits are positive outcomes, which may or may not be left over after we do some sort of calculation. Fourth, we can increase the benefits of leisure and recreation by reducing the negative consequences or increasing the positive consequences. Fifth, it is in our personal and professional best interests to do just that because, to the extent that we are successful, we move closer to doing justice to the ideals of our field.

For example, off-road-vehicle recreation in southern California's Mojave Desert should be fun, rejuvenating participants for their return to everyday life. We might quickly conclude that off-road-vehicle recreation is beneficial. But the litmus test of off-road-vehicle recreation rests, in part, in its environmental consequences. If an off-road vehicle damages the environment, if it disturbs or destroys desert tortoise or big horn sheep habitat, then those negative environmental consequences must be subtracted from any beneficial consequences of off-road-vehicle recreation. We would also note that any such net benefits could effectively be expanded if the negative environmental consequences were reduced or even eliminated. We would add further that leisure service professionals are obliged to try to do just that.

Now consider a boxing program for at-risk youth. Ideally, such a program should be fun for participants, teaching them skills that are beneficial in the outside world. We might quickly conclude that this activity, which helps participants feel better about themselves and their abilities, also is beneficial. But the litmus test of such a program rests in its social consequences. How will these youngsters use their improved self-esteem, new pugilistic skills, and heightened cardiovascular fitness? If they employ them in ways that have negative social consequences -- to rob someone, beat them up, and outrun the police -- then those consequences must be subtracted from any good the program is doing. At the same time, if those negative social consequences were reduced or eliminated, the program's net benefits could effectively be increased, thereby strengthening the rationale for the program's existence. Again, leisure service professionals are obliged to try to do just that.

Toward an Ecological Perspective

These two examples bring to light an even more fundamental assumption upon which our thinking is based. It is the assumption that people are inextricably connected to something larger than themselves. Call it a family, a community, an environment. Therefore, whether or not we acknowledge it, a person's welfare is wrapped up in the family's, in the community's, in the environment's. That is why we reason that the most consequential outcomes of leisure behavior, positive or negative, are always social in nature.

If you see people as separate and distinct from families, communities, and the environment, this reasoning may not carry much weight. But if you see people as part of something larger, then perhaps you feel the weight of the implications.

Most of our modern conceptions of recreation and leisure do not make this connection explicit. Indeed, the most common definitions of the terms treat them as matters of personal preference. Consequently, benefits can begin and end with the individual. Our field's approach to these phenomena in recent decades has been decidedly psychological. Our unit of analysis has been the person; yet, the larger history of our field has been sociological.

Think of Hull House in Chicago or the playground movement in Philadelphia and New York. In this regard, what we are asking the profession to consider is old fashioned. As much as anything else, it is a return to earlier perspectives -- some as far back as ancient Greece -- that emphasize people in community.

At the same time, however, there is an added twist to our point of view. We are asking, in the tradition of Aldo Leopold, to expand the concept of community to include the entire biotic world. In this ,sense, our position is more ecological than sociological If the individual is the domain of psychology, and the community is the domain of sociology, then the individual in community is the domain of ecology. And that is where we think the proper focus of our field should be. We see benefits as the products of freely chosen, joyful actions that preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of families, communities, and the environment.

When it comes to tallying the positive and negative social consequences of leisure behaviors to come up with some appreciation of their beneficial outcomes, there is no scientific equation or formula. Rather, we are left to wrestle with each individual behavior in its own context. This is not something that lends itself easily to quantification. It is a different kind of calculus.

However, we should attempt some sort of calculation. As we acknowledged earlier, our position is not particularly new or radical. In the final paragraph of the seminal Benefits of Leisure text, Roger Mannell and Dan Stynes noted that "a full understanding of the beneficial consequences of leisure also requires knowledge about the detrimental consequences. Leisure choices involve both benefits and costs to individuals and society ...

"Inherent in our model of the `benefit process' is the need for a full and balanced accounting of consequences, followed by a valuation process that determines the worth of an activity based upon both benefits and costs."

Breaking New Ground

If, as a profession, we want to go in this direction, there is important foundational work to be done. First, we must revisit the core values and beliefs upon which our profession is based. In particular, we must think of human beings as part of the biotic community, the community of all living things. If, as a profession, we want to go in this direction, we have to redefine leisure and recreation in the light of this interconnectedness. Finally, our strategies for service delivery must reflect this new meaning.

Why wouldn't we want to go in this direction? Personally, we don't know. But naysayers would likely talk in patriotic terms of the United States as the champion of individual rights, freedom, and choice. They would argue that leisure pursuits are among the last opportunities for exercising these American ideals and, furthermore, that the leisure services profession is among their last guarantors.

They would reason further that an ecologically based orientation to service would inevitably constrain individual rights, freedom, and choice. Their language would be peppered with words such as restraint, regulation, and restriction. Ultimately, they would characterize what we are calling for as simply un-American.

Well, what do you think? How do you see leisure and recreation in relation to the welfare of the individual, the community, and the biotic world? How do you see the idea of benefits in relation to the positive and negative social consequences of leisure behavior? Do you think our profession's current emphasis on benefits does justice to the whole picture, or do you, too, think a preoccupation with benefits obscures a more comprehensive and, therefore, more realistic view?

Parting Thought

We often lose sight of the fact that the world, in large measure, is something we dream up for ourselves. We lose sight of the fact that words like leisure and recreation are only abstractions we employ in trying to describe that world. But they are not the world. We say, "leisure is this," and "recreation is that," when we really should be saying, "leisure ought to be seen as this," and "recreation ought to be seen as that." We lose sight of the fact that human beings have the capacity to change what we mean by our words and, in so doing, change the world.

We want the leisure services profession to dream up a new way of thinking about itself, a way that is based on interconnectedness, a way that is based on the idea of individuals in community. If our profession can do that, if our profession can begin to use its imagination, then perhaps it, too, will come to see benefits as the products of freely chosen joyful actions that preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of families, communities, and the environment. Perhaps it, too, will begin to see recreation as the joyful actions themselves. And perhaps it will begin to see leisure as the atmosphere in which such joyful actions are both desirable and possible.

That, at least, is our dream.

Daniel L. Dustin, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Florida International University; Leo H. McAvoy, Ph.D. is a professor in the Division of Recreation, Park and Leisure Studies at the University of Minnesota and Thomas L. Goodale, Ph.D. is a professor of recreation resources management at George Mason University.