Interesting observations Brent.
I'll chime in from a cultural perspective. Having grown up in Mexico until 16 years old, I can tell you that long hiking was never a big pastime. If you were going to go any distance without a vehicle, it was going to be on horse. Car camping however, is widely done, loved especially in beach areas.
It got me to think a bit, and I think it is mostly that in hispanic cultures, meals are not just sustenance, they are a critical component of social interaction. And since hiking limits the ability to really have a feast, car camping is "really roughing" it!
I spent most summers as a kid at my dad's ranch for 3 months. On mostly short hikes and hunts. I regret not having done some deep hiking and camping because some of the country down in Baja is beautiful. It just wasn't thought of as an activity. Why do that when you could go out early in the morning, shot some quail and the have a great carne asada in the afternoon?
I have been thinking about this issue for years too and don't really have a handle on why. In my city, we are 52% Caucasian, 20% Asian, 2% Black/African-American and most of the rest of the population is Hispanic. When camping, I see primarily Caucasians and Hispanics, but almost no other subgroup. Camping is a poor man's vacation so it ought to bring out lower socioeconomic groups. When hiking, however, I see primarily Caucasians unless I'm hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains, and in particular, Mt. Baldy, where the mix is probably 60 Caucasian, 35% Asian (a large percentage of which greet me with heavily accented English) and maybe 5% Hispanic. When I go climbing, the population is nearly 100% Caucasian.
I haven't figured out why the Hispanics who I see camping, don't hike and why the Asians I see hiking don't camp.
I'm no demographer, so these statistics are surely flawed, but they seem to represent my own observations.
