Recreation Experience Preference Scales
Also known as: REP Scales, Driver REP Scales, Recreation Experience Preferences, Desired Outcomes Scales
The Recreation Experience Preference (REP) scales are a hierarchical battery of self-report measures, developed by B. L. Driver and colleagues over three decades, that quantify the desired psychological outcomes people seek from recreation. Rather than asking which activity someone prefers, REP asks why — capturing the experiences a person hopes to attain, organized into broad domains (such as enjoying nature, escaping pressure, achievement, affiliation, and learning) that each contain narrower scales. Manfredo, Driver, and Tarrant's 1996 meta-analysis in the Journal of Leisure Research consolidated more than three dozen studies that had used REP items, documenting a stable factor structure and reliable subscales and establishing REP as the standard motivational measure in outdoor recreation. The instrument operationalizes the behavioral, or expectancy-valence, view that recreation is goal-directed: people choose settings and activities expecting to satisfy specific experiential goals.
Key highlights
- Captures the desired psychological outcomes behind recreation, giving managers actionable insight into demand that activity labels alone cannot provide.
- Hierarchical domain-and-scale structure is reusable across activities and populations, making studies directly comparable.
- Backed by a meta-analysis across dozens of studies documenting a stable factor structure and generally high subscale reliabilities.
- Grounded in expectancy-valence theory, linking ex-ante desired experiences to the benefits-of-leisure framework and to opportunity-based planning.
Intuition
This section is available to Pro members. Upgrade to Pro
How it works
This section is available to Pro members. Upgrade to Pro
When to use it
Use the REP scales when you need to measure why people recreate — the specific experiences they hope to attain — rather than merely what activity they choose or how satisfied they end up. They suit outdoor and nature-based recreation planning, experience-based market segmentation, matching recreation opportunities to demand, and any study that wants a validated, comparable motivation measure grounded in the expectancy-valence view of leisure. REP is appropriate when respondents can meaningfully report goals for a particular engagement and when you can administer enough items per scale to sustain reliability. It is less suited to settings where motivation is poorly articulated or wholly habitual, where a single global motive dominates, or where the relevant question is post-hoc satisfaction rather than ex-ante desired experience — for which the Leisure Satisfaction Scale or outcome measures are better fits. Because the item pool is large, studies should select the domains theoretically relevant to their setting rather than administer the entire battery.
Strengths & limitations
- Captures the desired psychological outcomes behind recreation, giving managers actionable insight into demand that activity labels alone cannot provide.
- Hierarchical domain-and-scale structure is reusable across activities and populations, making studies directly comparable.
- Backed by a meta-analysis across dozens of studies documenting a stable factor structure and generally high subscale reliabilities.
- Grounded in expectancy-valence theory, linking ex-ante desired experiences to the benefits-of-leisure framework and to opportunity-based planning.
- The full item pool is very large, so studies must subset domains, and inconsistent subsetting across studies complicates exact comparison.
- Importance ratings are stated preferences and may diverge from the experiences people actually attain or value in situ.
- Some scales rest on few items and show weaker reliability in particular settings, requiring case-by-case validation.
- Desired-outcome phrasing assumes recreation is goal-directed and articulable, which fits purposeful trips better than habitual or impulsive participation.
Common pitfalls
This section is available to Pro members. Upgrade to Pro
Applications
This section is available to Pro members. Upgrade to Pro
Frequently asked
How do REP scales differ from the Leisure Motivation Scale?
Both measure why people engage in leisure, but at different grain. The Leisure Motivation Scale (Beard & Ragheb) reduces motivation to four broad motives — intellectual, social, competence-mastery, and stimulus-avoidance — applicable to leisure generally. REP is finer-grained and setting-anchored: it measures many specific desired outcomes organized into domains and scales, phrased as concrete goals for a particular recreation engagement, and is the standard in outdoor and nature-based recreation. REP trades parsimony for diagnostic detail useful to managers.
Why is every REP item phrased as a goal beginning with 'to'?
The 'to …' stem casts each item as a desired experience the recreationist hopes to attain — 'to release tension,' 'to be with friends,' 'to learn about nature.' This phrasing operationalizes the expectancy-valence premise that recreation is chosen to satisfy experiential goals, and it ties the rating to a specific engagement rather than to general life values. Manfredo and colleagues stress that this wording is what makes REP a recreation-motivation measure; changing it shifts the construct being measured.
Do I have to administer all the REP scales?
No, and you should not. The REP item pool is large and spans many domains; administering all of it burdens respondents and yields scales irrelevant to your setting. Standard practice is to select the domains and scales theoretically relevant to the activity and management questions at hand, then validate the chosen scales' factor structure and reliability in your own sample before scoring. This selective use is consistent across the literature the 1996 meta-analysis synthesized.
Sources
- 1.Manfredo, M. J., Driver, B. L., & Tarrant, M. A. (1996). Measuring Leisure Motivation: A Meta-Analysis of the Recreation Experience Preference Scales. Journal of Leisure Research, 28(3), 188-213.
- 2.Driver, B. L., Brown, P. J., & Peterson, G. L. (Eds.). (1991). Benefits of Leisure. State College, PA: Venture Publishing.ISBN 9780910251471
You have read it. What now?
Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 23). Recreation Experience Preference Scales. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/sport-leisure-studies/recreation-experience-preference-scales