10. Freedom Campers: A New Neo-Crowd (-Tribe) Breaking Tradition with Planning Boundaries

The ephemerality of freedom camping presents complex problems at community and policy scales. Freedom camping’s mobility impacts planning and policy settings for local communities (some becoming very popular though not always welcoming) as places of tourism and recreational vehicle (RV) consumption. Research on planning and policy-making around freedom camping, and further, freedom campers as a ‘neo-crowd’ in residential communities, requires escalation in anticipation of freedom camping’s increasing and future consumption. This chapter presents freedom campers as a particular case example of an emerging tourism micro segment. The specific research objective of this Australian case study is to explore the variation in camper characteristics and campsite preferences, and the effect of this variance on the future management of freedom camping in local communities. It explores the group culture of freedom camper tribes by describing the niche segment and identify shared identities as well as analysing their collective mechanisms. Through this neo-tribal lens, and framed within conceptualisations of gaze theory and social interactionism, 41 interview informants were contacted through gatekeepers of the caravanning sector and further theoretical sampling. Each shared their perception, experiences and understandings of the main factors influencing developments in freedom camping, and camper segmentation. The findings reveal: first, freedom campers often seek to set themselves apart from the wider tourism cohort and define themselves in opposition to the mainstream caravanners. Second, campers self and peer identify through a spectrum of neo-tribes, of commercial through to freedom campers with an emerging sub-tribe as ‘swingers’ that alternate in between. Third, in acknowledging the macro to micro identifying determinants that help to shape the neo-tribes, caravanning site selection (camping consumption) is likewise bounded from fully ‘hooked-up’ to totally ‘laissez faire’ environments. The chapter’s originality lays in the author’s liminality within RVing neo-tribes, between insider and outsider, to bring a perspective that others may not see. The narrative takes a deliberate route to acknowledge the heterogeneity of freedom campers while still exposing examples of ‘common’ identifying determinants and behaviours of various sub-tribes. It seeks to bring enlightenment to ‘others’ in caravan and camping management, to move the freedom camping debate towards enriched and workable solutions and increase camping production through regenerative and creative planning and policy environments. Hence, the chapter’s focus is not solely on any one neo-tribe at the public-policy-level, and conceivably, others may see different narratives. However, as a forerunner, the chapter paves the way for others to continue the story of freedom camper tribes, to tease out, expand, critique or reject numerous threads, and/or to take the neo-tribe conversation across to other disciplinary areas of research.