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Abstract
Recreation and leisure researchers have identified awe is a positive affective response that may occur during recreation experiences. Scholars have described awe as a powerful emotion that may be experienced when one is confronted with great beauty and grandeur, or as an emotional response to stimuli that do not fit within existing mental schemas. Positive psychologists have identified benefits of awe including increased personal strength, feelings of optimism, enhanced appreciation, an environmental ethic, the discovery of purpose and direction, and outcomes related to physical health. This paper offers a review of the literature addressing awe, including hypothesized antecedents and consequences of this emotion. The authors suggest that awe plays a potentially important role in the experience of outdoor recreation and call for future empirical studies to explore the potential benefits and disbenefits of such experiences.