Teslin, I think one element involved is the simple fact that most people (including 'outdoorsy' ones) really don't have serious landnav skills. Most have never had to cover distance off-trail in challenging terrain using baselines, catching features, pacecount, and ded reckoning. Most have been served quite well with trails and simple terrain association, so they have no concept of needing backups of serious tools.
IMHO the most
"challenging terrain" for navigation is flat land with thick forrest or brush cover. One can't do terrain association because there isn't any real terrain, and in any case you can't see what few landmarks there might be because of the brush. That's where compass, pace count, etc become critical. What people tend to think of as challenging terraine (steep and rugged) is often the easiest to navigate in by terrain association.
One result of the now ubiquitous use of GPS, with map displays, is that many people not only don't know how use a compass, but they are also inept at map reading and terrain association as well. But that's the geezer in me speaking. I'm a geologist by training, and back in the day we learned to make our own maps in the field by pace count and Brunton Pocket Transit. It was always amusing to plot up ones data and calculate the closure error of one's traverses!
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