Outdoors

At a glance

Traditional outdoors participation is often considered to take place in rural settings, accessed by white, middle class, car-owning people or families doing traditional ‘outdoors’ activities.

To a certain extent, current participation in the outdoors is reflective of this stereotype. However, the landscape is changing and there are several key trends that need to be considered in order to drive growth in outdoors activity.

With a great potential to grow the outdoor activity market, we’ll help you here to appreciate the size of the market and the opportunities to increase the number of people who get active outdoors. In doing so, we’ll consider customer behaviour and motivation as well as the scale and reach of supply-side provision.

Our strategy – Uniting the Movement

While millions of people already take part in outdoor activities, the scope of our work is widening to encompass and promote opportunities that appeal to a wider range of people, many of them in currently under-represented groups.

We’ve already backed some work that would fall into this category. This Girl Can has teamed up with British Cycling to increase female participation via the HSBC UK Breeze programme. This campaign aims to grow the 250,000 people that HSBC UK Breeze has already attracted since its 2011 launch and address the barriers to cycling, with friendly and knowledgeable female ride leaders who help attendees to build their confidence and skills.

Find out more about Uniting the Movement

Research

What we know

There are 28.6 million regularly active adults in England, the highest activity levels ever recorded and up 500,000 since the previous Active Lives Adult Survey
Equally, a reduction of 122,000 means that inactivity amongst adults in England is also at the lowest level ever
The overall growth in numbers has been driven by increases in walking and adventure sports (a category which includes hill and mountain walking, climbing and orienteering)
There are significant trends that are constraining and challenging the development of outdoor activities, including significant disparities between socio-economic groups – those of lower socio-economic backgrounds are most likely to be inactive (33%).

Boy riding bicycle outdoors on wooden path

Getting Active Outdoors

The Getting Active Outdoors report was carried out by Outdoor Industries Association, a not-for-profit membership organisation promoting the UK outdoor recreation industries.

The report builds an understanding of the outdoor activities market and examines the demand and supply of outdoor provision. It also takes an in-depth look at the profile of the outdoor consumer, taking account of demography, motivation, participation and provision in outdoor sport and recreation in England.

Understanding the consumer’s personal preference is a major element of the report. The market segmentation is an in-depth look at the characteristics and motivations of the cross-section of outdoor consumers.

Getting Active Outdoors Download the file - 9.92 MB

Disability Data Analysis

The Disability Data Analysis was taken from the Getting Active Outdoors report and analysed separately with a focus on the disabled population.

The report includes a breakdown of the demographics within the disabled population and current outdoor participation rates, making data comparisons with the overall market. This information complements our wider disability insight and can be used with our guidance to help organisations engage with disabled people.

Disability presentation summary Download the file - 877.78 KB

What works

The growth of online communities, informal sports, flash-fitness and natural fitness have all helped encourage outdoor physical activity
Opportunities to take part as an individual or an informal group, at any time of the day or week, frequently or infrequently, have all contributed to increased interest in engaging in outdoor activities
There are a wide variety of demographic, social, urbanisation, political and trend-related reasons why outdoor recreation and activities have enjoyed an increase in interest including growth in outdoor activity tourism, an increase in the number of outdoors mass participation events and an overall growth in revenue sales across the outdoors commercial sector.

Tools and resources

Outdoors Summary Brochure

The Getting Active Outdoors Summary Brochure below gives a brief outline of our Getting Active Outdoors report, including an introduction to the outdoor activity market, and highlights a number of key findings.

Slide Deck for Partners

The Slide Deck for Partners highlights our current position in the outdoors activity sector and pinpoints areas for opportunity and growth. The data is taken from our Getting Active Outdoors report.

Getting Active Outdoors Summary Brochure Download the file - 4.41 MB

Slide deck for partners Download the file - 3.35 MB

At a glance

Our strategy – Uniting the Movement

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