Sense of Place in Tourism and Leisure: the Case of Touring Skiers in Quebec

The concept of sense of place has become central in understanding various modern phenomena in leisure. Tourism promoters in outdoor recreation now emphasize opportunities to bond with nature, with ‘wild’ landscapes or with the authentic value of a destination. However, studying this tourism and recreation issue from the standpoint of ‘place’, which draws upon notions of attendance, identification and social and individual meaning, is lacking in modern studies. This paper, based on a quantitative approach using a questionnaire survey administered to touring skiers in Quebec (n=829), thus aims to present the links between various practice settings and the perceived meaning and identification that skiers attach to their practice sites