Camping at home: escapism, self-care, and social bonding during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The restrictions imposed by COVID-19 lockdown(s) left many feeling trapped at home. One leisure activity that saw a surge in popularity during lockdown was ‘home’ camping. Camping has long been associated with positive health and well-being outcomes and during lockdown camping at home was documented across social media platforms as people shared experiences of their micro-adventures. This paper will draw on social media (Instagram) and survey (> 260 responses) data gathered from ‘regular’ campers and those who had never previously camped during the UK lockdowns. Specifically, we explore: (i) what motivated home camping; (ii) the impact of camping activity on physical and mental well-being; (iii) the role it played in fostering and/or nurturing social relationships in isolating circumstances (iv) how digital practices were incorporated into camping as an activity. As such, the paper will provide a valuable contribution to understand the transformative potentials of restricted leisure practices in the pandemic.

Rights

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2022.2082992

Repository URI

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/6ff70508-a33d-4fe2-ad99-c6b5f821e652