The Out­door Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion (OIA) and Out­door Foun­da­tion (OF), long­time author­i­ties on out­door par­tic­i­pa­tion data, recent­ly released find­ings from the 2023 Annu­al Out­door Par­tic­i­pa­tion Trends Report. For more than 15 years, the Out­door Par­tic­i­pa­tion Trends Report has served as the most com­pre­hen­sive source of insights and nar­ra­tives around who’s doing what, when, and how out­doors.

The 2023 report reveals increas­es in the over­all out­door par­tic­i­pa­tion and offers some key insights, includ­ing the fol­low­ing:

• The out­door recre­ation par­tic­i­pant base increased by 2.3 per­cent in 2022 to a record 168.1 mil­lion par­tic­i­pants or 55 per­cent of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion ages six and old­er.
• While 2022 out­door recre­ation includ­ed record num­bers of par­tic­i­pants and record-high par­tic­i­pa­tion rates, the num­ber of out­ings per par­tic­i­pant declined in 2022 for the first time since the pan­dem­ic began in 2020.
• The new out­door recre­ation par­tic­i­pant base became more diverse in 2022 includ­ing increas­es in par­tic­i­pa­tion among Black, His­pan­ic, and LGBTQIA+ peo­ple.   
• Eighty per­cent of out­door activ­i­ty cat­e­gories expe­ri­enced par­tic­i­pa­tion growth in 2022, includ­ing large cat­e­gories like camp­ing and fish­ing and small­er cat­e­gories like sport climb­ing and skate­board­ing.

The full report is avail­able to OIA mem­bers only, but read­ers can request a copy of the Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry with key data points and insights at this link.