Open AccessHiking to Well-being: Leisure Benefits for Personal and Social Development
Author(s) -
Caihong Zhang
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. earth and environmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.179
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1755-1307
pISSN - 1755-1315
DOI - 10.1088/1755-1315/513/1/012068
Subject(s) - recreation , popularity , tourism , feeling , social benefits , consumption (sociology) , marketing , quality (philosophy) , business , psychology , sociology , social psychology , geography , political science , social science , philosophy , archaeology , epistemology , law
In recent years, hiking has developed rapidly, but research on the leisure benefits of hiking is still ignored. This research takes the Ancient Tea-Horse Road in Pu’er Yunnan Province as an example, and adopts a qualitative research method to conduct in-depth interviews with 21 interviewees. On this basis, the paper analyzes the motivation of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road hikers and reveals the main significance of hiking. The results show that the Ancient Tea-Horse Road hiking is a valuable option for an economical and enjoyable activity. High popularity, low-cost consumption and being able to meet the participants' experience demand are the key factors to attract the hikers. Two key themes related to leisure benefits emerged. Firstly, for the person, hiking can bring the participants relaxation, challenge oneself, identify cultural quality, enhance interpersonal feelings and develop social relations as well as other positive effects. Secondly, for the society, hiking can enrich tourism leisure products, inherit historical and cultural heritage, and improve the quality of tourism and leisure industry. Finally, the leisure benefits generation mechanism model of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road hiking and implications are discussed.