Think about the last time you started a new activity. You went through a discreet series of steps to start doing that thing. In outdoor recreation, we illustrate those same steps in the ORAM, or the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model.
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The origins of the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model actually date back over 60 years to a body of research that eventually coalesced into what's known as Diffusion of Innovations Theory. But the model as we know it today was a result of a 2012 work group coordinated by the Wildlife Management Institute that discovered that all of these efforts going on around the country to introduce new people into hunting or the shooting sports were lacking a basic understanding of how people ultimately self-identify in these activities.
All right, station number six, let's do a show pair really quick. So pull one's coming up, probably gonna break it right there on the report. We'll pull two, probably break it about in the same spot. So yeah, that's great.
By now you might be wondering: what does the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model entail?
As discussed previously, in general it's the process by which anyone comes to self-identify as a participant in any outdoor activity. But for the purposes of today, we're going to discuss it in the context of hunting and shooting sports.
The model has three distinct stages: you have recruitment, retention, and reactivation.
When people are going through these phases, they have steps within each one. Within the recruitment phase, this is where somebody becomes aware of hunting or shooting sports. Then they might become interested in actually becoming a participant or trying it out themselves, at which point they may get a trial opportunity.
After that initial trial opportunity, there's a key point in there between the recruitment and the retention phase where they have to decide whether or not to continue. If they decide to continue in the activity, they move into retention, where you have continuation with support or continuation without support. In that continuation phase is where you're actually self-identifying as a participant and being retained as a hunter or a shooter.
Now, as you progress through life, there are key things that might happen that could cause you to lapse. At that point, you'd fall into that reactivation phase, where you've lapsed and you might have the opportunity to reactivate, whether it's through a program, a family member, or a friend taking you back out in the field or to the range.
These three phases that I just described in the model—recruitment, retention, reactivation—historically we can think of those as kind of a natural process. The majority of people that are participating in hunting or shooting sports today likely got into it from a young age. They were probably taught by a family member like their mom or dad.
But as we've seen urbanization and a shift in the rural traditions and values that formed the culture of hunting and society as a whole, we have a growing population of people that have an interest in participating in hunting or shooting but might not have an avenue to do so. That's where these R3 efforts come in.
So let's take a look at how you can use the model to intentionally focus your efforts in your organization or your state.
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There are a lot of different ways that an R3 practitioner can use the ORAM, but I'm going to focus on two specific ways.
The first one is when an R3 practitioner uses the ORAM to develop new programs, and they can focus their programs very intentionally on a specific target market that is at a specific stage in the ORAM. The effort can then help advance them to the next stage of the ORAM.
The second way that an R3 practitioner can use the ORAM is by taking a collective look at all of the efforts offered in an area or by a specific organization and mapping them out on the model. This allows them to identify the gaps to develop new efforts.
When understanding how to use the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model, there's one final piece that's critical, and that is defining your target audience. An evaluation of the historical efforts that have tried to introduce people to hunting or the shooting sports found that many of those efforts, actually the majority, were youth-focused. And all of those efforts, for the most part, resulted in participants engaged in those programs who were either the children or spouses of the existing base of hunters.
When you think about what we talked about earlier—with this growing population of people with an interest but no avenue from non-traditional backgrounds—this is an issue.
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So you can see why this is problematic. Women, minorities, and urban populations are all needing the highest amount of support, coaching, and first trial opportunities, but they're ending up with the least amount of exposure and support. And so that results in our community lacking in diversity, advocacy, and participation in hunting and shooting sports.
That's absolutely true. So you can start to see how an understanding of the Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model is going to be crucial for advancing the R3 movement and ensuring the continuation of hunting, shooting sports, fishing, and boating.
If you're mapping your efforts and identifying those gaps, then you're setting yourself up for success to identify those best practices that you need to effectively implement R3 efforts.