The defining moments of benefits - Benefits-Based Management - Benefits

In the November issue of Parks & Recreation magazine, you read a brief historical overview of the National Recreation and Park Association's involvement in Benefits-Based Management, beginning in 1991. To give direction and more credence to a program of research on the benefits of leisure, it started in the USDA Forest Service in 1987, and the state-of-knowledge text, Benefits of Leisure (Driver et al., 1991a) was produced.

Most of the 57 authors and co-authors of the 35 chapters met in Snowbird, Utah, in 1989 to review near-final drafts of the text. Administrators of several park and recreation agencies who attended questioned how the results of research on the benefits of leisure could be used by practitioners. To address that question, a Workshop on Applying Knowledge About the Benefits of Leisure was held in Estes Park, Colorado, in 1991.

One-half of the 70 participants were practitioners (ranging from heads of park and recreation agencies to field managers at all levels of government), and the other half were scientists and educators who had an applied orientation. Representatives were present from the United States and Canada. At this meeting was NRPA executive director R. Dean Tice, who has been a leading proponent of the Benefits approach.

To help clarify some confusion about the term Benefits-Based Management, it should be mentioned that at the applications workshop in Colorado, the Benefits approach was called Benefits-Based Management, but was later expanded into the Benefits Approach to Leisure (BAL) in the U.S. and the Benefits-Driven Approach and Benefits-Based Recreation in Canada. There were two reason for this change to BAL:

1. To avoid the false connotation that the Benefits approach is used only to guide management, because it is also used to direct leisure policy development, research, and education

2. The BAL is more than a guide for management, it is also an integrated and science-based philosophy about the role of leisure society. Nevertheless, many people still prefer BBM as the generic label. Still others prefer the title "An Outcomes Approach," because the BAL is really about both positive and negative outcomes of park and recreation programs, with the goal being to optimize the number and magnitude of net benefits.

Basic Concepts

The fundamental question raised by the BAL is, Why should a particular recreation service be provided? As just stated, the answer is formulated in terms of clearly defined positive and negative consequences of delivering that service with the objective being to optimize net benefits -- or to add as much value as possible.

At the 1991 applications workshop and in the Benefits of Leisure text, a benefit was defined as "an improved condition" of an individual, a group of individuals, or another entity, such as the physical environment.

In that text and subsequent publications that have documented the benefits of leisure (Parks and Recreation Federation of Ontario, Canada, 1992; Godbey et al., 1992; Sefton and Mummery, 1995), the benefits are categorized as personal, social, economic, and environmental, and no one category is considered more important than another. NRPA uses the category "individual" instead of "personal" and "community" instead of "social."

During pilot-test implementations of the Benefits approach, the above definition of a benefit as "an improved condition" proved insufficient, so two additional types of benefits were derived.

The second type of benefit recognizes that no improved change in condition is needed for people or the physical environment to benefit. Rather, they can benefit if a desired condition is maintained so that an undesired condition would not occur. This is known as the prevention of an unwanted condition benefit and recognizes that the provision and use of recreation services create many such benefits.

For example, no improvement in physical fitness might occur for a physically active person, but if he or she did not continue to be physically active, there would probably be a decrement in physical fitness; an undesired condition would be created. Other examples include maintained friendships and community stability; prevention of social problems, such as those that may be caused by at-risk youth; and prevention of adverse impacts to the physical environment.

The third type of benefit is the realization of a specific satisfying psychological experience, which is called a psychological outcome. This type of benefit accrues only to individuals -- not to groups or to the physical environment -- and includes all satisfying outcomes related to leisure.

Examples are successfully testing one's skills, enjoying a symphony orchestra, feeling good after physical exertion, experiencing closeness as a family, or renewal of the human spirit Research has identified many such benefits of recreation (Driver et al., 1991b). This third type of benefit of leisure was added to the BAL because, under an outcome approach, policy analysts and managers must address their customers' preferences for satisfying psychological experiences, as well as their desires for the particular improved or maintained conditions covered by the other two types of benefits.