Abstract
Trends in recreational activities, which have appeared in the Annual Report on Leisure in Japan, were analyzed from the perspective of forest management. First the 94 recreational activities were classified into 8 types (Types A to H) based on the possibilities of forest use. As a result, we found that 48 out of 94 activities could utilize forest areas or forest products (Types A to G) while the remaining 46 activities had almost no relation to forests (Type H). We also found that the average participation rates of the 46 activities in Types A to G had a wide range from 0.25% (hang-gliding and paragliding) to 62.62% (eating out for leisure), and that the average participation rates for each type ranged from 12.96% (Type E) to 61.88% (Type D). Then trends in participation rates for each recreational activity over the past several decades were analyzed. As a result, the trends were classified into the following six groups ; Group 1, constantly rising trend (six activities in four types) ; Group 2, flat trend after rising (five activities in four types) ; Group 3, constantly flat trend (fourteen activities in four types) ; Group 4 declining trend after rising (seven activities in three types) ; Group 5 constantly declining trend (ten activities in four types) and Group 6, flat trend after declining (four activities in four types).
