Can the simple act of surfing make you more likely to be an environmentalist? A college student’s thesis seems to suggest as much. Photo: Linus Nylund/Unsplash
In an article back in February, I asked you – begged you, really – to take a short survey for my honors thesis at Eastern Kentucky University to help me “prove that surfing can change the world.” Happily, 201 of you completed the survey and shared it with your friends, and for that, I am forever grateful. The results are now in, and they are exciting. Not like getting an invitation to Kelly Slater’s surf ranch exciting, but in the academic world, pretty awesome stuff.
To catch you up, my thesis is called “Ripple Effect: An Examination of Surfing as a Force for Positive, Lasting Personal and Societal Change,” and relied on a random sampling of surfers like you to complete surveys to quantify how (if at all) surfing can be a force for good. Those of you who took the survey know that it hinged on the idea that the spiritual or metaphysical nature of surfing gives it the power to change individuals, the environment, and their communities for the better.
A problem with understanding a lot of survey research is that you, the reader, rarely get any info on the respondents themselves – the people who took the survey. Allow me to rectify that. My conclusions were drawn from a population of 201 surfers – 69 percent male, 44 percent Christian, an average age of 41, and almost half rating themselves of “average” surfing skill level. Way to be humble. Hardly representative of the global population of surfers, but a guy has to start somewhere, right?
To bring some meaning out of the raw survey data, I hypothesized that a surfer’s view of the metaphysical or spiritual aspects of surfing would affect three variables: individual growth, concern for the environment, and community outreach, all attributed to or influenced by surfing. Basically, I argue the more strongly you agree that surfing has important metaphysical or spiritual attributes, the more likely you believe surfing impacts you positively as a person, your concern for the environment, and your motivation for getting involved in community outreach. My data proved exactly that.
The survey asked surfers how strongly they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about their views on surfing, and statements about how surfing affects them personally. Possible responses were Strongly Disagree (1), Disagree (2), Neutral (3), Agree (4) or Strongly Agree (5). You first need to know that the average response on the spiritual/metaphysical scale for all 201 responses was 4.25 – nicely between “Agree” and “Strongly Agree” – with the lowest reported response being a 3 – “Neutral.” So the majority of respondents value surfing for its metaphysical/spiritual attributes.
In parsing the data, I used different scales to explore the relationship between these spiritual views of surfing and personal growth, environmental ethics and community involvement. What I found is that as a surfer’s spiritual views of surfing increased there was a significant corresponding increase in all three other areas. How big of an increase? Well, for every 1 point increase on the spiritual/metaphysical scale – from “Neutral” to “Agree” (3 to 4) or “Agree” to “Strongly Agree” (4 to 5), for example – personal growth increased .662, environmental ethics increased .389, and community outreach increased .485 (if you academic types want to dig into the numbers, feel free to view my thesis here).
So can surfing change the world? A lot of us sure believe it can and now there is some legit research to back that up. My thesis shows most surfers who view surfing as a spiritual or metaphysical experience benefit from growth as a person, prompting them to be better stewards of the environment and more involved in their community – in other words, changing the world one person and one community at a time.
For those of you who are doing similar research and asked me to share my results, take my numbers – please! Use this data, build on it, use it to back up your own stories and experiences about the positive power of surfing and to encourage your local governments and businesses to invest in strengthening your local surfing community. My next step is to use this research with other economic studies to show my own local government how attracting more surfers to the area through improved infrastructure could have positive effects throughout the community and local economy.
Surfing can indeed change the world, my friends. If you don’t believe me, the analytics don’t lie.
