Type: Reports

Here at OIA, our research team focuses on providing you with insights into the outdoor consumer: what drives their choices, what gear they choose, and what they value about their outdoor experiences. With our new monthly newsletter — Research Roundup — we aim to deliver the best data from our partner, CivicScience, who can reach hundreds of thousands of consumers in real-time to ask questions and gather insights that give you clear insights. You’ll also gain easy access to the full catalog of research reports we offer as well as trends we are tracking.

Happy reading!

Kelly Davis

Director of Research

Outdoor Participants are Worried About Inflation

Overall, outdoor recreation consumers are significantly concerned about inflation, but their concern appears to have reached a plateau.  Outdoor participants are less concerned about inflation than the average U.S. consumer.

Outdoor recreation consumers say they do not plan to spend more next month on groceries, at bars, or toys and hobbies (including outdoor gear).

Keep in mind, outdoor recreation participants tend to spend more than the average American adult across most categories with the notable exception of groceries. When budgets need to be tightened, outdoor participants literally tighten their belts by cutting spending on groceries.

This data indicates that outdoor consumers will continue to spend on outdoor gear, but they do not plan to increase their spending on the category. We should expect flat to slightly declining sales in the outdoor market in August and September.

Who is Willing to Adjust Their Lifestyle to Help the Environment?

I just finished reading “Is Outdoor Recreation Associated with Greater Climate Change Concern in the United States?” by Kyle Knight and Feng Hao. The authors start with the hypothesis that is often repeated in discussions about climate and outdoor that persons who participate in “nature-based leisure activities” have more pro-environmental attitudes than those who don’t. The data and analysis presented in that study is robust and showed a positive significant effect between the frequency of outings and climate change concern. If you have another excellent data source, it never hurts to see if your data jibes with an interesting finding. I decided to take a look at our CivicScience data to see if it told the same story. Spoiler alert, it did.

Overall, outdoor recreation participants are more likely to adjust their lifestyle to help the environment. This is particularly remarkable because we found relatively even distributions of political affiliation across major outdoor recreation categories including hiking, bicycling, camping, running, fishing, and hunting. Political affiliation, overall, had the most significant impact on responses to the question “Do you try to adjust your lifestyle to help the environment?”  Even while controlling for political affiliation, people that participate in outdoor recreation are more likely than non-participants to adjust their lifestyles at least occasionally to help the environment.

One of the major advantages of CivicScience data is the size of response. In this case, we are looking at more than 200,000 responses and margins or error under +/-1%. This data gives us a more granular look at outdoor activity and attitudes about the environment. In fact, the question “Do you try to adjust your lifestyle to help the environment?” is even more powerful because we can examine it by outdoor category. Additionally, we can compare it to segments of the general population.

Overall, cyclists are most willing to adjust their lifestyles to help the environment. Bicyclists are being chased by the camp/hike/fish category in second place and runners in a close third. Hunters report that they are less likely to make any lifestyle changes to help the environment than other outdoor recreators, but hunters were no more likely than Democrats (generally) to say they would never adjust their lifestyle to help the environment. Additionally, hunters contribute more than $1.6 billion each year for conservation programs through license fees and contributions to conservation groups. Republicans (generally) are least likely to say they would make any adjustments in their lifestyle to help the environment. In fact, in this survey alone, out of 160,662 Republicans surveyed, more than 88,000 indicated they would never adjust their lifestyle to help the environment.

The hypothesis that people who participate in outdoor recreation are more likely to make changes in their lifestyle to help the environment is correct. The data indicate that this holds true across political affiliations. Maybe outdoor recreation offers a platform for civil discourse across political lines about environmental issues that will help us conserve and protect public lands and mitigate impacts of climate change for future generations.

Trend Spotter: Meet the Upcycler

No, this is not about riding bikes uphill! Upcycled clothing may recall visions of DIY fashion projects gone awry, but today luxe apparel designers are presenting upcycled fashion in their collections. This trend is a nod to sustainable manufacturing and awareness of the environmental impact of apparel manufacturing. Sustainability is key to this trend and consumers of all ages are integrating concerns about the environment into their fashion statements and their decisions about what they will purchase. Read more about outdoor brands with repair, resell & upcycled gear programs.

Research Grab Bag

You can now download the Outdoor Industry Workforce Assessment which looks to identify major trends in workforce hiring and retention, help further educational and up-skilling initiatives, and provide a snapshot of where the industry stands in its efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion. Key findings from the survey include the following:

• New hires: The industry expects to hire for a high volume of entry and skilled professional positions over the next year.
• Work/life balance: Outdoor companies are prioritizing flexible work arrangements and work-life balance as attraction and retention strategies ahead of employee benefits and financial rewards.
• Qualified applicants: 66% of survey respondents report having difficulty finding qualified applicants. The largest barriers to recruiting hard-to-fill jobs are finding qualified applicants, and lack of affordable housing options proximal to the job location.
• Increasing DEI: Companies who have a diversity plan in place are utilizing a wide variety of methods and tactics to achieve their goals. However, companies that do not currently have a diversity plan in place largely do not plan to implement one or do not know where to start.

If you don’t want to read about it, you can watch our panel discussion about it here.

You can also download the new State of the Outdoor Market report, which shares exclusive insights on participation, consumer trends, and economic and social forces impacting our industry. Key findings from the report include:

• Outdoor economy: Outdoor recreation accounted for 1.8% of the U.S. GDP in 2021 with $689B in gross output and 4.3M jobs.
• Increasing diversity: Diversity in age and ethnicity is accelerating in the U.S., but the outdoor participant base is less diverse than the population.
• Outdoor growth: New participant entries into outdoor recreation are 26% since January 2020. Skateboarding, hiking, kayaking, and surfing had the highest growth rates across outdoor categories.
• Post-COVID effects: Patterns in how we return to work will affect outdoor participation. Remote work allows many to participate outdoors for the first time, during hours when they would have been in an office or commuting, and across more outdoor activities.
• Rising inflation: High inflation, 9.1% in June and 8.5% in July, is likely to reduce spending in the outdoor market.
• Fashion trends: Several fashion trends are currently red hot including “Cottage Core” and “Coastal Grandmother.” Read about and see images related to these and more hot trends that are likely to impact outdoor apparel.

Here at OIA, our research team focuses on providing you with insights into the outdoor consumer: what drives their choices, what gear they choose, and what they value about their outdoor experiences. With our new monthly newsletter — Research Roundup — we aim to deliver the best data from our partner, CivicScience, who can reach hundreds of thousands of consumers in real-time to ask questions and gather insights that give you clear insights. You’ll also gain easy access to the full catalog of research reports we offer as well as trends we are tracking.

Happy reading!

Kelly Davis

Director of Research

Outdoor Consumer Intelligence: One in Three Hikers Identify as Fashionistas; the Other Two Want Comfort, Function, and Value 

This week, we look at the fashion sense of hikers. Nearly 60 million Americans will hike in 2022, so we wondered how they think about fashion trends and their hiking apparel. We worked our way through CivicScience’s consumer intelligence database and found some clues. Turns out, most hikers (68 percent) say they don’t care about fashion trends at all, and interest in fashion declines with age. Men are far less likely to say that fashion trends influence their hiking apparel choices, and young women are most likely to self-identify as fashion innovators, leaders, and followers.  

These insights could help suppliers and retailers better understand their customers and more effectively target different segments. Check out the data: 

Nearly all (93 percent) of the hikers who say “trends do not impact what I wear” report that they are just “not into fashion.” These consumers are more likely to consider functionality, durability, value, and comfort over style or trendiness when deciding what to buy.  

The segment that reported that trends don’t impact their choices AND indicated that “they are not into fashion” is made up of mostly male (68 percent) and older hikers, including men over 55 (88 percent) and women over 55 (72 percent).  

Among the 32 percent of hikers (see figure 1) who say that fashion trends do impact what they wear are self-professed fashionistas: 26 percent of them consider themselves either fashion innovators or leaders, and 28 percent say they are fashion trend followers. And about half of those who say trends do impact what they wear say they are not into fashion; this seems confusing, but humans can be complex—some individuals realize that, even though they are not focused on fashion, trends still have an impact on what they wear on the trail.  

This group will consider look, trendiness, and brand appeal to varying degrees when they purchase outdoor apparel. This group would also be more likely to prioritize buying a fresh look before considering product features like functionality, durability, value, and comfort. Females make up 60 percent of this group, and males make up 40 percent.  

 Regardless of gender, older consumers are less likely to be influenced by fashion trends, and older males are most likely not to be into fashion or trends. Young females, however, are most interested in fashion trends. In fact, 30 percent of women ages 18 to 34 consider themselves fashion innovators or leaders, and another 28 percent of women in this age group said they are fashion followers.  

 Selling into this market will require brands to be focused on trend with their products as opposed to being focused on value, durability, functionality, and comfort. That doesn’t mean that products that are trendy will not also need the more solid features like functionality and durability, but young consumers will make their calculations differently when purchasing apparel and will be more likely to choose style over substance. 

Trend Spotter: Meet the Coastal Grandmother 

A growing group of women of all ages are dressing like they spend their days on art, philanthropy, and wine-fueled mischief at their beach houses. The look is simple, clean, neutral, and comfortable. Learn more about the trend here.  

Data Trail Mix: Outdoor Participant Base Continues to Grow Post Pandemic Surge 

Outdoor recreation is a large and growing industry that produced $689 billion in economic output in 2020, supports 4.3 million jobs, and is enjoyed by 165 million Americans over the age of 6 or roughly 53 percent of the total U.S. population. The outdoor industry has always been large, but the COVID-19 pandemic drove growth across the industry: More than 10 million new participants have enjoyed outdoor recreation since March 2020. Limited options for safe indoor activities during the pandemic—particularly group activities—drove growth in outdoor recreation, especially prior to the delivery of vaccines. However, the continued growth of the participant base in 2021 indicates that the need for safer places to interact was not the sole variable driving growth.  

Categories that attracted many new participants during the pandemic—including walking, hiking, car camping, trail running, skateboarding, and birdwatching—are some of the most accessible activities, and they enjoyed continued growth in 2021 following their epic increases in 2020.