Abstract With the development of socio-economy, city residents have more free time to join recreational activities. Recreation turned to be socialization and popularization in cities. With the increasing of income, the town residents take part in recreational activities more frequently. Recreation has become a completely new way of life, and become one of the standards to measure living standard of the residents. Up to now, from the angle of tourism, the research mainly covers the long and medium long distance outdoor recreational behavior of big city's residents. However, the research that covers short and medium long duration of time recreational behavior within twenty-four hours is still at its initial stage. This paper takes Mengzi, a county of less than 100,000 population of Yunnan province as an example to study the recreational behavior of townsmen living in the poor financial condition and backward areas. The paper pays close attention to the recreational activities within twenty-four hours with a narrow scope. The author has investigated 650 residents and has interviewed some of them carefully. Using the spot check data of recreational behavior in Mengzi County, this paper attempts to analyze the recreational spatial distribution and expectations towards recreation, which are concerned with their recreational preference, frequency (Per month), length (Per time) and expenditure (Per time).Such analysis may result in following:Most residents take pleasure in spending leisure mainly at home or outdoor no more than three km. Their interest in outdoor activities decreases with the distance increasing, They would travel farther on weekends than on weekdays and also have larger recreational space; People enjoy themselves by means of a wide variety of amusements including walking, outing, visiting, going shopping, etc; most residents abuse chiefly for relaxation and consider recreation as a part of their life; the recreational frequency, length and expenditure of a city resident depends on his specific character. Among them different sex has different recreational frequency, length and expenditure. But ages mainly influence recreational frequency and length. Expenditure depends on income, family structure, and custom of consumption, occupation and other factors.
2004, Vol. 19 
