36 exam-style questions on Changing leisure patterns — topic E.1 of Optional theme: Leisure, tourism and sport in the IB Geography syllabus — with answers and explanations. Samples below; the full set is free with an account.
A person plays football on Saturday morning in a local league, walks in a country park on Sunday, and takes a week's holiday abroad in August. Which classification of these three activities is correct?
Answer: Sport, recreation and tourism, all of which are forms of leisure
Leisure is the umbrella term for time free from obligation; sport adds organised competition and rules, recreation is informal enjoyment, and tourism requires staying away from home for at least one night. The categories nest rather than exclude one another.
International tourist arrivals grew from a few tens of millions in 1950 to well over a billion by the 2010s. Which combination of factors best explains the growth?
Answer: Rising disposable income, cheaper air travel and paid holiday entitlement
Demand needs money, time and access, and all three moved together: real incomes rose, jet aircraft and later low-cost carriers cut the cost per kilometre, and statutory holidays spread. Supply-side changes followed the demand rather than creating it.
Two households have the same income. One takes three holidays a year, the other none. Which factor is most likely to explain the difference?
Answer: Stage in the life cycle, including caring responsibilities and health
Participation depends on time and mobility as well as money: a household with young children, an elderly relative to care for or a long-term illness faces constraints that income alone does not remove. Explaining leisure patterns by income alone is the standard oversimplification.
A large regional stadium draws spectators from up to 80 km away, while a village playing field serves people from about 2 km. What does this contrast illustrate?
Answer: Sphere of influence increases with the order of the facility
A high-order facility needs a large threshold population to be viable, so it is rare and people travel further to reach it; a low-order one is common and serves a small range. This is central place logic applied to leisure.
Plog's model of traveller types predicts that, as a small and little-known destination becomes well known, heavily built up and easy to reach, the market it attracts shifts. Which shift does the model predict?
Answer: From allocentric (venturer) visitors towards psychocentric (dependable) visitors
Allocentrics look for the unfamiliar and arrive while a place is still undeveloped; once hotels, package deals and familiar food appear, the risk-averse psychocentric market takes over and the venturers move on to somewhere else. The model runs in one direction only.
A student writes: 'People in high-income countries have gained free time since 1950, so participation has risen in every leisure activity.' Which single flaw does this reasoning contain?
Answer: It generalises from a total to every separate activity
An aggregate can rise while several of its components fall: cinema attendance, church-based clubs and organised youth movements all lost participants in the same decades that gym membership and foreign travel grew. A total tells you nothing about any one activity inside it.
That was 6 of 36 Changing leisure patterns questions.
Practise all 36 freeExplainAO2 · 3–6 marks
Give reasons or causes: say what happens AND why, linking each step with 'because' or 'so that'.
SuggestAO2 · 3–6 marks
Propose a plausible solution, hypothesis or answer; there may be no single right one, but it must be reasoned.
36 Changing leisure patterns questions — free with an account. Spaced repetition, streaks and full exam simulations included.
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