Outdoor recreation in forests and mountains is growing in popularity globally, especially in industrialised countries. Outdoor recreation has benefits both for practitioners’ body and mental health, and local communities for revenue opportunities. This study focuses on frequent outdoor recreationists, who are members of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), by exploring: (i) the infrastructure preferences for accessing and moving in mountain and forest areas; (ii) possible associations between socio-demographic characteristics and frequency of mountain and forest visits; and (iii) possible relationships between sociodemographic characteristics and the frequency of use of mountain bike and e-bike. Ordinal logistic regression models were used to achieve the second and third objectives. Results show that CAI recreationists tend to prefer limited or no services for accessing mountains. They rarely use e-bikes and mountain bikes and their frequency of visits to mountains are influenced by educational attainment and occupation. Results can provide valuable information for land management decision processes regarding accessibility infrastructures. Future research should address more occasional mountain and forest recreationists and local communities.
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Citation
Pagot G, Grilli G, Gatto P (2025). Into the wild? Preferences of frequent mountain and forest recreationists for accessibility and mobility. iForest 18: 128-137. - doi: 10.3832/ifor4802-018
Academic Editor
Marco Borghetti
Paper history
Received: Jan 23, 2025
Accepted: Mar 02, 2025
First online: May 24, 2025
Publication Date: Jun 30, 2025
Publication Time: 2.77 months
© SISEF - The Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology 2025
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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