Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to reconceptualize outdoor leisure safety as a preventive public safety governance issue rather than a matter confined to individual caution, recreational participation, or post-accident response. It examines how risks arising from hiking, camping, trekking, cycling, fishing, water-related leisure, and marine leisure may become public safety concerns when they involve foreseeable hazards, insufficient risk information, delayed rescue access, or fragmented institutional responsibility. Research design, data and methodology: This study adopts a qualitative and design-oriented research approach grounded in legal-institutional analysis, conceptual clarification, and normative policy design. Instead of empirical measurement or statistical accident analysis, it develops a conceptual framework for outdoor leisure safety governance by examining the relationship among disaster risk communication, public safety literacy, preventive behavior, legal accountability, and feedback-based institutional improvement. Results: The analysis shows that outdoor leisure safety requires an integrated governance structure linking risk communication, public safety literacy, preventive action, legal accountability, and post-accident learning. It also demonstrates that fragmented approaches based solely on individual negligence, formal warnings, post-accident rescue, or sector-specific regulation are insufficient to prevent avoidable harm in outdoor leisure contexts. Conclusions: The study concludes that outdoor leisure safety should be understood as a convergent field of disaster risk prevention, citizen capacity-building, and legally accountable public safety governance. Public authorities and relevant private actors are not required to eliminate all risks inherent in outdoor leisure activities, but they should establish reasonable preventive measures where risks are foreseeable, serious, and institutionally manageable. The proposed framework supports a proportionate safety governance model that protects public well-being while preserving the autonomy and social value of outdoor leisure participation.