Tag: RST Newsletter Spring 2023

Growing up in Guangzhou, China, Suiwen “Sharon” Zou quickly learned the importance of marketing a business.

Zou’s parents are entrepreneurs and they run their own factories.

“My parents, they are very savvy business people,” said Zou, an assistant professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois. “Growing up, I was educated by my parents that financial resources are an important means, if not the most important means, to an end. That got me very interested in business, in different business principles. So I always have that in mind.”

When Zou left China for the United States to pursue a graduate degree, she was focused on business. When she chose Texas A&M—in part to be near the person who became her husband—she gravitated toward an interest in marketing because of her advisor, whose research involved marketing.

“I was taking multiple classes, and specifically two classes that really got me to shape my research agenda. One was a class with the marketing department,” she said, “and the class discussed influential papers in psychology and behavioral economics. That started to plant the seeds.”

In the final year of her doctoral studies, she took a class that connected marketing and the financing of park, recreation, and tourism services. That’s when everything clicked for Zou, and she was hooked. Zou completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M and then, with her husband urging her on, she applied for the job in the College of Applied Health Sciences at Illinois.

“I was not confident I would be able to get tenure here,” she said. “But my husband told me I have the support. So when I came (to Illinois for the job interview), there was this celebrity crush, you know? And then (RST Professor) Monika Stodolska picked me up from the airport. I could not believe it, because I was citing her work. I could not believe I was meeting people that I cited in my research!”

Now, she said, “I study how people have fun.”

Precisely, the overarching goal of Zou’s research is to improve tourism/leisure experience and community well-being by examining consumer’s perceptions and devising innovative marketing practices. 

A recent study involved fee-based pricing at the Indiana Dunes National Park.

Zou said it was vital for public parks and other tourism industries to build a sustainable revenue model and not to solely rely on decreasing funding from state and federal sources. 

The primary purpose of Zou’s study was to “understand visitors’ and surrounding community residents’ perceptions of Indiana Dunes National Park user fees to inform a fee structure that balances revenue generation and equitable access.”

During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Zou said, “parks saw explosions of people visiting.” While that was great for parks in terms of revenue, it also led to increasing operation costs at a time when government funding for these sites is being reduced.

“The specific goal is to find out how visitors see the park fees, and are they fair?,” Zou said.

The RST researcher said her preliminary findings indicate there was no consensus from study participants on what “fair” means, and that tension between fairness principles partly explains the longstanding controversy and debate on public land user fees.

Zou said tourism industries need to diversify their revenue streams because of declining funding from state and federal agencies.

“It’s like an investment,” she said. “You need to diversify in order to have that sustainability. You need to be more entrepreneurial with your funding sources. As for pricing user fees, how we can design a fee structure based on visitors’ diverse levels of perceptions and willingness-to-pay so that it is more acceptable to the visitors and we’ll get more revenue for the underfunded park services.”

Zou is also working with four local, rural communities—Galena, Savanna, Havana, and Grafton—to build up their tourism industries. Those communities have small populations—in the hundreds—but on the weekends, it grows ten-fold, in some cases.

“The goal of that project is to create a toolkit for a rural community that is under-resourced to help to guide their tourism development initiatives,” she said. “We are close to finishing the toolkits.”

One thing is clear from speaking with Zou: she loves her work and her workplace.

“(RST Dept. Head) Carla Santos told me, ‘This is a huge playground. You will have a ton of support to do the research, and you will have a lot of playmates that will play with different toys. And it will be a great place to work.’ And it turns out to be really, really true.”’ 

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RST Professor Laura Payne was chosen by the College of Applied Health Sciences to carry the gonfalon, or college banner, at the AHS Convocation in May. The honor of carrying the gonfalon is typically awarded to senior faculty or staff who have had a significant impact on AHS students.

“I am honored to carry the gonfalon for the AHS Convocation because it is a symbol of the mission and values of the college that we embrace and work toward through our teaching, research and service,” Payne said.

Payne joined RST in 2001 as an assistant professor and as an Extension Specialist in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. She is the current director of the Office of Recreation and Park Resources. Payne’s research has examined the relationship between leisure style and health of older adults with chronic conditions and the role of local parks and recreation agencies in health promotion and health behavior change. She has directed several statewide outreach and research programs such as the Illinois Rural Recreation Development Project, Illinois Senior Wellness Initiative, Take Charge of Your Health: Live Well be Well, and the Illinois Health Care Reform Initiative.

Payne considers it a privilege to work with communities across the state to enhance individual and community health through education, research, and public engagement that makes life better for people where they live, work, and play.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to expose undergraduate and graduate students to the meaningful work we do through ORPR and the Leisure, Health and Wellness Lab,” she said. “I hope that I have demonstrated the value of publicly engaged research and outreach to both students and colleagues, and that they will honor the legacies of Al Sapora, Charles K. Brightbill, Joe Bannon, Bob Espeseth, James Brademas, Robin Hall and many more as they pursue their careers.” 

Payne was inducted as a Fellow in The Academy of Leisure Sciences in 2019 and received the organization’s Presidents Award in 2020.

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By ANNA FLANAGAN

How does a scholar with a master’s degree in geography and a Ph.D. in earth and atmospheric sciences end up teaching and doing research in leisure studies? 

By pursuing the passion for understanding the relationship between culture and leisure that began in their graduate work.

At Warsaw University in Poland, Monika Stodolska focused her master’s degree on tourism development in Peru and received a post-graduate diploma in Latin American studies. Her doctoral research at the University of Alberta investigated leisure among ethnic and racial minorities in Canada. Since completing her Ph.D., she has continued to pursue her passion as a professor of recreation, sport and tourism, building an outstanding record of scholarly and professional contributions over the last 23 years. In 2022, she was named the Brightbill/Sapora Professor in Applied Health Sciences.

“I have always been interested in Latinx cultures and issues of cultural change that are related to migrations,” she said. “This merged with my interest in how leisure among diverse groups contributes to individual and community health and well-being.”

Stodolska’s research is guided by developing theory in the areas of leisure, culture, ethnicity and race and by pressing social issues such as lack of access to natural environments in urban areas and discrimination. She has investigated how leisure helps minorities to retain their culture, achieve socioeconomic advancement, adapt to host environments, develop a sense of belonging and improve their mental and physical health. She also has examined how crime, low socioeconomic standing and undocumented status impose constraints on leisure.

“Investigating factors that help underprivileged members of our society to live healthy and fulfilling lives is incredibly rewarding in and of itself,” Stodolska said.

She cited two studies as among the most meaningful to her. In the most recent study, Stodolska returned to her homeland to examine the experiences of refugees, largely women and children, who fled to Poland after being displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In what she termed a “truly unprecedented refugee crisis,” more than six million people have crossed the Polish border since February, and almost two million remain. Many of them are living with Polish families. Through interviews with refugees, hosts and volunteers, Stodolska is investigating how the refugees are adapting to their new lives and the role of leisure in helping them deal with war-related trauma, as well as the Polish population’s response to the crisis. Based on the findings of her study, she hopes to write a book and to contribute toward the design of refugee-centered recreation programs.

The other study, funded by the Call to Action to End Systemic Racism and the Urbana Park District (UPD), followed up on a study she and former RST professor Kim Shinew had done in 2017 that identified strategies for improving access to UPD programs and services for diverse communities. The 2021-22 study evaluated the changes the district had implemented and resulted in a blueprint for serving these communities that will be distributed to other recreation agencies in the United States.

Until Shinew’s retirement, she and Stodolska had a dynamic research partnership for more than 20 years. Of the partnership, Stodolska said, “We had different personalities but we worked together seamlessly. Our research interests are very similar, we have similar values, we care about communities and we care about underrepresented populations.” They also collaborated on establishing the Diversity Research Lab in 2001, when scholarship on leisure and recreation among racial and ethnic minorities was in its infancy. Alumni of the lab now hold leadership positions in leisure education, research and practice. Stodolska’s approach to mentoring graduate students is simple.

“I treat them like family. I expect them to form a non-competitive community and to support each other, and the relationships they form are incredibly strong,” she said. 

It is the same kind of environment Stodolska has found in RST, which she calls “truly my home.” While she has received many honors during her time at Illinois—a Larine Y. Cowan Make a Difference Award for Teaching and Mentoring in Diversity, Fellow status in the Academy of Leisure Sciences, the King James McCristal Scholar Award for Excellence in Research—it is her work with students that gives her the most pride.

“At the end of our careers, we won’t be remembered by the number of papers or the books that we’ve written but by the impact we’ve had on people and whether we’ve used this privilege of professorship to leave the world a slightly better place,” she said.

With all the projects she has yet to complete, the end of Stodolska’s career is far in the future. Wars, poverty and political instability all lead to migrations, and inequality is entrenched in U.S. and Western societies. Given leisure’s critical role in helping underprivileged members of society live better lives, she anticipates being busy for many years to come.

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