Motivations and Outcomes: A Benefits Based Study of Hiking on the Appalachian Trail

The Appalachian Trail (A.T.) is a national resource that may be useful in addressing American society's current concern with increases of chronic illnesses and disabilities directly related to physical inactivity. The purpose of the current study was to examine the benefits and outcomes associated with hiking on the A.T. An internet-based survey was used to gather information from A.T. hikers. The data revealed that a relationship exists between attributes (ATTRIB), consequences (CONSEQ) and outcomes (OUTC), thus, supporting the means-end theory constructs. Internal and external validity analyses and reliability analyses showed the Benefits of Hiking Scale (BHS) to be an accurate and consistent measurer of the constructs and dimensions of both means-end and Driver's recreation benefits (BENE). No statistically significant differences among hiker types with respect to any dimension of the means-end theory (i.e., ATTRIB, CONSEQ and OUTC) were found. No statistically significant differences were found with respect to the prevention of a worse condition (PREY) or realization of a psychological state (PSYC) dimensions within the construct of BENE; however, statistically significant differences among hiker types did exist with respect to the improved condition (IMP) subcomponent. Within the IMP dimension of BENE, differences were found to exist between day hikers and section hikers, day hikers and thru-hikers, and multi-use and thru-hikers.