Advances In Management Vol. 11 (1) March (2018)

Transcription

1 Case Study: A Study of Recreational Participation Motivation, Serious Leisure and Recreational Specialization in Tennis Participants Chih-Peng Tsai Education Department of Sport, National Changhua University of Education, R. O. C., TAIWAN monkey1960@yahoo.com.tw Abstract The purpose of this study is to analyze the structural relationship between recreational participation motivation, serious leisure and recreational specialization. In this study, the participants of tennis recreational activity were investigated by non-random methods. A total of 280 valid questionnaires were obtained. After analysis of descriptive statistical and PLS, the results show that the higher is participative motivation of tennis participants, the more obvious are their serious leisure characteristics and higher is degree of recreational specialization, then the degree of recreational specialization is also higher for those with serious leisure characteristics. Keywords: Recreational tennis, participate motivation, serious leisure, recreational specialization. Introduction In recent years, with the prevalence of leisure trend in Taiwan, tennis has become a popular leisure activity and resort and hotels also regard tennis facilities as the necessary recreational venues. Not only that, but also because participants in tennis leisure activities seriously participated in this recreational activity and with the increase of experience, they also changed from amateur participants to players with skills and knowledge, which is the process of transforming serious leisure 1 into recreational specialization. 2 Based on the above background analysis, this study intends to select tennis participants in their recreational participate motivation, serious leisure and recreational specialization of three elements. The study of its internal relations from the perspective of structure is based on review of the literature establishing conceptual model and hypothesis, used empirical analysis to verify with hope that through the research for the people participation in tennis recreational activity, it will provide a theoretical basis and practical reference on marketing. Review of Literature Recreational participate motivation: Recreational motivation is a kind of internal process caused by individuals' leisure and recreation needs which caused individuals to engage in and maintain this recreational activity and lead this activity to a certain goal. It satisfies the individual's recreational needs through the occurrence 5 of recreational activities. 3 Crandall 3 pointed out that people participate in the leisure motivation, the motivation is divided into: 1. enjoy the natural; 2. escape civilization; 3. to escape the daily exercise regular course of official duties and obligations; 4. creative; 5. release; 6. social contact; 7. meet new people; 8. heterosexual contact; 9. families; 10. gain status; 11. social rights; 12. altruism; 13. to seek stimulation; 14. self-realization; 15. sense of achievement, challenge and competition; 16. to pass the time, avoid boring; 17. knowledge of aestheticism. In the study of leisure and recreational motives, the recreational experience preference scale developed by Driver et al 4 in 1977 and Beard and Ragheb 5 leisure motivation scales are widely adopted or adapted by the following researchers for their wide coverage. Driver et al 4 began to study on selection of waters and forest leisure activities and people's participation motivation, they found that people participate in outdoor recreational activities have the following reasons: 1. Social: social recognition, family gatherings and friends, meet new people, to participate in the development of personal experience; 2. A sense of accomplishment, enhance self - impression, ability test, exploration, study and development of physical fitness; 3. Experience: sensory stimulation, adventure, calm, nostalgia, test limit; 4. Natural appreciation: enjoy the scenery, close to nature, seek private open space; 5. Change the rest and avoid congestion, pressure, regular course of official duties and climate. Beard and Raghed 5 based on the theory and research of motivation, divided the leisure motivation into four dimensions: intelligence, social interaction and proficiency. Serious leisure: The concept of serious leisure comes from Stebbins 1 studying leisure activities of amateurs and the special leisure culture and characteristics of them involve activities and finds that serious leisure is different from generally casual leisure. Stebbins 6 defined the serious of leisure for "personal system engage in amateur, hobbies, or volunteer activities, they involve just as business like to get attention and obtain and express their special skills and knowledge, let the participants feel full and very interesting. Stebbins 1,6 pointed out that the serious leisure has five characteristics:

2 1. firm and indomitable, their choice of leisure activities in addition to love, even face difficulties or obstacles, based on persistence and commitment to activities and of selfchallenge, they will still try to overcome the face of adversity and will continue to participate in the activity. 2. As your career like business involvement, the depth serious leisure for their choice of leisure activities, through the process of continuing to participate in activities, through participation in the incident, encountered the activities of special events, as well as encountered in the phases of achievement and failure, to help participants find out and establish their own career goals. 3. Enduring personal interests, Stebbins that the depth leisure can be obtained from the long-term participation in leisure activities, self-realization, self-fulfillment, selfexpression and self-creation or restoration, a sense of accomplishment, enhance self-image, social interaction and a sense of belonging, maintain physical activity energy, self-gratification or pure pleasure the interests. 4. The unique spirit, whether amateurs, hobbies or volunteers, has these characteristics and their natural beliefs, values, moral standards, working standards and performance levels will naturally form a sub culture. This subculture is the unique spirit of deep leisure and the deep leisure participants will continue to engage in their favorite leisure activities with this unique spirit. 5. Strong sense of identity, with the depth of leisure, in contact with their favorite interests, have a strong sense of identity and to participate in the leisure activities for the honor and are pleased to share the experience of self. Recreational specialization: The origin of recreational specialization is mainly from the study of the scholar Bryan for trout fishing in Bryan 2 defines recreational specialization as "preference for sports and activity environment, so it has equipment and skills, from ordinary to special continuous behavior". So, we can find that the theory of "recreation specialization" is most effective in understanding the attitude and behavior pattern of an outdoor activity participant and from the amateur participant to the professional person. Bryan 2 believes that recreational specialization is a potentially useful management tool because it provides a deep analysis of how people are involved in leisure activities throughout the whole time. Because a professional person has different needs than the novice, managers can provide opportunities for them to meet their special preferences and behaviors and improve the quality of environmental attributes according to different professional recreation. Although recreational specialization can understand people's involvement in leisure activities throughout the whole time, researchers have different opinions on measuring indicators. However, some scholars believe that the recreation specialization Bryan measure is limited to the cognitive level, measure does not include individuals of emotional attachment on the process, or classification of type. 8,9 6 Little 10 considered that expert traits recreationist has features as follows: 1. spend a lot of time in the activities; 2. on the activity has a strong sense of participation; 3. in activities to learn advanced professional knowledge; 4. and participate in the activities of the staff closely, get a sense of pleasures. In the specialization research of Lee and Scott 11, according to the related research, professional indicators can be divided into behavior involvement, skills and knowledge, behavior commitment and personal commitment. Research Hypothesis Recreational participation motivation and serious leisure: Chul, Miyoung and Sanghoon 12 research relationship between serious leisure tendency and leisure motivation, it was found that participants had a high motivation to participate in recreational activities and they not only participated in an activity, but also had a high degree of serious leisure characteristics. Herman 13 studied the relationship between mountain bike participants' leisure motivation, serious leisure and self-identification. It was found that the motivation of participants increased and the characteristics of serious leisure were more obvious and the self-recognition was higher. Pi et al 14 studied serious leisure, motivation to volunteer and subjective well-being of volunteers in recreational events, the results of this study revealed that serious leisure is positively associated with both motivation to volunteer and volunteers subjective well-being while the association between motivation is to volunteer and subjective wellbeing. Hypothesis 1: Tennis participants' recreational participation motivation has a positive effect on the serious leisure. Recreational motivation and serious leisure: Recreational specialization is a potentially useful tool for understanding the motivation of people involved in outdoor recreation activities. Previous studies have proved the relationship between the two concepts. For example, Scott et al 15 studied to classify bird watchers into high, middle and low professional categories and found that three level of specialization is significantly related to the non-generic motives of selection. Lee, Graefe and Li 16 studied effects of specialization and gender on motivations and preferences for site attributes in paddling. The results showed that high specialists differed from low specialists in the rated importance of selected motivations and preferences for site attributes. Findings also indicated that male paddlers were more specialized than females. Hypothesis 2: Tennis participants' recreational participation motivation has a positive effect on the recreational specialization. Serious leisure and recreational specialization: In the

3 relationship between the serious leisure and recreational specialization, there are many relations to link and verify both in relative studies such as the Tsaur and Liang 17 to study the bird watchers as an example to discuss the relationship between the two, the serious leisure of the more obvious, the recreational involvement of specialized higher. Lee and Scott 18 are members of the American Island Association. The empirical results are highly related to recreational and recreational specialization. Hypothesis 3: Tennis participants' serious leisure has a positive effect on the recreational specialization. Methods Subject and sampling: This study is the object of the leisure sport of tennis and it is not within the scope of the study for the athletes and the students of the tennis course. For those who can actually take part in tennis and leisure sports, this study takes members of tennis leisure club as subjects and takes non-random sampling to investigate. A total of 300 questionnaires were sent out and 280 valid questionnaires were collected. Questionnaire: This study is divided into four parts, the first part is the "recreational participation motivation scale", the main purpose is to understand the reason of tennis participants they participate in recreational tennis activity, this part of the scale consisted of 15 items and 5 factors, respectively "release body and mind", "physical fitness", "learning new knowledge", "interaction with others" and "self-challenge", the part of the scale refers relative recreational participation motivation research 3-5 and tennis participation motivation studies. 12 The second part is the "serious leisure scale", the main purpose is to understand the tennis participants their serious leisure characteristics, this part of the scale consisted of 18 items, 6 factors are "need to persevere", "careers in their endeavors", "durable benefits" and "significant personal effort", "unique ethos" and " identify strongly", this part of the scale mainly refer to Stebbins 1 pointing out that the serious leisure has six characteristics and related research. 12,13 The third part is the "recreational specialization scale", mainly to understand their participants for recreational specialization degree of tennis activities, this part of the scale consisted of 13 items and 3 factors respectively "commitment" and "behavior involvement" and "skills and knowledge" in this part, the main refer of recreational specialization and the related research. 2,10,11 Above three scales were measured by Likert five-point scale method, from "very agreed" (5 points), "agreed" (4 points), "ordinary" (3 points), "disagree" (2 points), to "very disagree" (1 points). The fourth part is the participants demographic variables including gender, age, education level, marital status, income and occupation. 7 Data analysis: In this study, on the questionnaires analysis, use statistical analysis steps as follows: 1. Used SPSS for Windows 21 by frequency distribution and percentage of descriptive statistics to analysis of demographic variables. 2. Used Warp PLS 5.0 statistical software to analyze the reliability and validity of participants' recreational participate motivation, serious leisure and recreational specialization scale with the statistical method of partial least squares (PLS) and the causal relationship between three variables. 3. In the indicators of and validity, first in reliability adopt compose reliability and Cronbach 's values to determine the reliability; in the validity, factor loading to each observation variables to determine whether latent variables have convergent validity to determine 19 and average variation of extraction (AVE) amount to determine whether has the difference validity between variables. 4. In the aspect of causality analysis (structural model), we see 1 whether the standardized path coefficient is statistically significant; 2 use R 2 to determine the explanatory power of the model. 20,21 Results Respondents profile: Of the 280 effective samples collected from this study, 221 (78.9%) were male and 59 (21.1%) for female. In terms of marital status, 238 (85%) were unmarried, 5 were married without children (1.8%) and 37 (13.2%) had married children. In age, 20 years old are 118 persons (42.1%), years old are 126 persons (45.1%), years old are 25 persons (8.9%), years old are 9 persons (3.2%) and over 50 years old are 2 persons (.7%). In terms of education level, there were 23 junior middle school students (8.2%), 27 senior middle school students (9.6%), 161 junior college students (57.5%), 57 university students (20.4%) and 12 graduate students (4.3%). In terms of occupation, there are 194 people (69.3%) in the service sector, 10 people (3.6%) in the government sector, 19 people in the financial industry (6.8%), 10 people in science and technology industry (3.6%), 42 people in the industry (15.4%), 6 (2.1%) people in agriculture. Analysis of the reliability and validity of recreational participation motivation scale: In the reliability of the scale, composite reliability and Cronbach 's α standard value must be equal to or greater than.70 22, the measurement standards in the factor loading and average variance extracted (AVE) are at least greater than or equal to.50, from table 1. This study used four latent variables in the composite reliability and Cronbach 's α reaches the standard value. In terms of validity, convergent validity is aware of the magnitude of the variables in the measurement variables and the factor loading must be greater than If we do not reach.50, the scale item must be deleted. The results of the analysis from table 1 show that the composite reliability of the "recreational participation motivation

4 scale" and the value of Cronbach 's alpha are highly than.70. In terms of validity, each factor of observation variable loading is higher than.50 and each latent variable AVE is higher than.70. It shows that this scale has high convergent validity. The results of the analysis from table 2 show that the composite reliability of the "serious leisure scale" and the value of Cronbach 's alpha are highly than.70. In terms of validity, each factor of observation variable loading is higher than.70 and each latent variable AVE is higher than.50. It shows that this scale has high convergent validity. The results of the analysis from table 3 show that the composite reliability of the "recreational specialization scale" and the values of Cronbach 's alpha are higher than.70. In terms of validity, each factor of observation variable loading is higher than.70 and each latent variable AVE is higher than.50. It shows that this scale has high convergent validity. Structure model analysis: The analysis results found the relationship between the three latent variables of "recreational participation motivation", "serious leisure" and "recreational specialization". The structural model is detected by the structural equation model (path analysis) and the results are shown in figure 1. In figure 1, the path coefficient is standardized regression coefficients (β). Recreational participation motivation has positive effect on serious leisure (β1=.75, p<.01), the explanatory power reached 55% (R 2 =.55); "recreational participation motivation" (β2=.21, p<.01) and "serious leisure" (β3=.65 p<.01) of "recreational specialization" also had positive effects, the explanatory power reached 60% (R 2 =.60). Conclusion Relationship between recreational motivation with serious leisure: The analysis found that participants in their tennis activity recreational participation motivation had positive influence on the serious of leisure to support H1. The main purpose is to achieve the "release body and mind", "physical fitness", "learning new knowledge" and "interaction with others" and "self-challenge", Because of the above reasons, let them continue to engage in the activity of 1,6, resulting in serious leisure traits including: "need to" persevere", "careers in their endeavors", "durable benefits" and "significant personal effort", "unique ethos" and "identify strongly". The above results not only support related research but motivation has a significant positive influence on the serious leisure, so from the above discussion, one can get the first conclusion: when participants recreation motivation is higher, their serious leisure degree was higher. Latent variables Table 1 Summary of reliability and validity of recreational participation motivation scale Observer variables Factor loading CR Cronbach, s α AVE RBM 1.Venting emotion 2.Stay away from daily life trifles 3. Let the body be healthier HPF 4.Contact nature 5.Make myself energetic 6.Improve physical fitness IO LNK 7. Friends and relatives encourage participation 8. To interact with people of the same values 9. To chat with others 10.Explore more new things 11.Experience different things 12.Learning and progress SC 13.Test my ability 14.Feel the sense of achievement 15.Try something that's not gone through Note: "release body and mind (RBM)", "physical fitness (PF)", "learning new knowledge (LNK)" and "interaction with others (IO)" and "self-challenge (SC)" 8

5 Latent variables NTP CITE DB SPE UE IS Table 2 Summary of reliability and validity of recreational participation motivation scale Observer variables 1.Busy will still take part in it 2.Still take part in a bad mood 3.The climate is not good and is still involved 4.future will continue to engage in activity 5.Tennis can help me find my career direction 6.Tennis is part of my life 7.Achieve a sense of achievement 8.Gain a sense of fulfillment 9.Can get to know a lot of friends 10.Invest a lot of thoughts and time 11.Willing to buy a tennis racket 12.Reading magazines to increase knowledge 13.Participate in activities and parties with members 14.With the like-minded friends can speak freely 15.Get along with a member like a family 16.I think tennis is a very meaningful activity. 17.Care about any report of the game of tennis. 18. I like to talk about the topic of tennis with the members Factor loading CR Cronbach, s α AVE Note: "need to persevere (NTP)", "careers in their endeavors (CITE)", "durable benefits (DB)" and "significant personal effort (SPE)", "unique ethos (UE)" and " identify strongly (IS)" Table 3 Summary of reliability and validity of recreational specialization scale Latent variables Observer variables Factor loading Commitment 1. Not to be able to engage in tennis and not.83 know what to do 2.Stop playing tennis and lose contact with.83 your friends.86 3.Other leisure is not as interesting as tennis 4. Prefer to play tennis rather than do something else Behavioral involvement Skill and knowledge 5.Engage in tennis seniority 6.Every time engaged in tennis 7.The average number of times a week is engaged in tennis 8.The cost of buying tennis costumes and racket 9. Familiar with the equipment and rules of tennis 10. Understanding the current status of world famous tennis players 11. Familiarity with the brand of tennis racket 12.Familiarity with the quality of tennis balls 13.Familiar with world tennis professional events CR Cronbach, s α AVE

6 Serious Leisure R 2 =.55 B=.74 (p<.01) Recreational participation motivation B=.62 (p<.01) B=.21 (p<.01) Recreational specialization R 2 =.60 Relationship between recreational motivation with recreational specialization: The analysis found that participants in the activities of the recreational participation motivation had positive influence on recreational specialization to support H2. They showed participants engaged in activities. The main objective in order to achieve physical and mental health, learning, release, interaction and challenge, but also because of the above reasons, they are engaged in activities, not only for active commitment behavior and will continue the involvement activities, but also will continue to enhance the skills and knowledge in tennis. The above results support that the higher the degree of specialization is, the higher the motivation of participation is, the higher the degree of specialization is, the more attention is paid to the environmental attributes and the positive correlation between participation motivation and recreation specialization. 15,16 So, from the above discussion, we get the second conclusion: when participants recreational motivation is higher, their recreational specialization degree was higher. Relationship between serious leisure with recreational specialization: The results of the analysis show that the serious leisure characteristics of tennis participants have a positive impact on recreational specialization to support for H3 which shows that the participants in their participation in tennis is unremittingly and as his career as input from the activities constantly obtain lasting personal benefits, so as to make the effort and had a unique spirit and strong spirit. The above characteristics of serious leisure make him not only commit commitments to activities, but also continue to involve in activities and improve their skills and knowledge in tennis. The above results support Scott 24 point out that two variables of serious leisure and recreation specialization can be applied to different activities and can measure and evaluate the degree of serious leisure and recreational specialization. Fig. 1: Structure model 10 Tsaur and Liang 17 on the bird watchers as an example to discuss the relationship between the two, the serious leisure recreation is more obvious, the higher is the degree of serious leisure and recreational specialization will be. So, from the above discussion, one can get the third conclusion: when participants serious leisure characteristics is higher, their recreational specialization degree was higher. Implications For government sport sector: At present, tennis leisure activities are a trend. First, from this study, we can find that the motivation of people's participation is very important. Therefore, in promoting strategies, government sectors should use schools, stadiums and parks to build court and open public uses and they will consume and use them. Attracting and encouraging people's participation, promoting and telling people's continuous participation in tennis activities can get benefits of physical, psychological, social and learning new knowledge because for participants with serious leisure, they will continue to participate in this activity. For tennis business: For tennis supplies industry (including retailers, clothing, supplies and rackets) as participants in amateur tennis before becoming experts, because have serious leisure characteristics, resulting in their continued involvement in this activity and in the tennis equipment and clothing and shoes will put a lot of money. The above result is, of course, a profit maker and the most important thing is advertising marketing. Therefore, we should emphasize people's understanding of the benefits of tennis activities so that they can start involving in activity. In addition, the industry should be members of the organization to attract people to join the club, so that they can not only meet the recreation motivation, through long-term investment, their depth of leisure will be more obvious, but the cost in tennis will improve. Let the industry have long-term benefits.

7 For future researchers: First, the participants in this study are tennis participants. Due to the large number of leisure activities, future researchers can further investigate different activities. Also, in the study area, one also can be in different parts of the rider to carry on the investigation, or other leisure activities, to understand the relationship between the depth of leisure characteristics and specialized. In the study, the leisure behavior variables for many specialized participants may exist intermediary or disturbance effect. References 1. Stebbins R.A., Serious leisure: A conceptual statement, Pacific Sociological Review, 25, (1982) 2. Bryan H., Leisure value systems and recreational specialization: The case of trout fishermen, Journal of Leisure Research, 9(3), (1997) 3. Crandall R., Motivation for leisure, Journal of Leisure Research, 12(1), (1980) 4. Driver B.L., Brown P.J. and Peterson G.L., eds., Benefits of leisure, State College, PA, Venture (1991) 5. Beard J.G. and Raghed M.G., Measuring leisure motivation, Journal of Leisure Research, 15(3), (1983) 6. Stebbins R.A., Amateurs, professionals and serious leisure, Montreal, McGill-Queen s University (1992) 7. Ewert A. and Hollenhorst S., Testing the adventure model: Empirical support for a model of risk recreation, Journal of Leisure Research, 21, (1989) 8. Bucnanan T., Commitment and leisure behavior: A theoretical perspective, Leisure Sciences, 7(4), (1985) 9. McIntyre N. and Pigram J.J., Recreation specialization reexamined: The case of vehicle-based campers, Leisure Sciences, 14, 3-15 (1992) 10. Little B.R., Specialization and the varieties of environmental experience: Empirical studies within the personality paradigm, In Wapner S., Cohen S. and Kaplan B., eds., Experiencing the environment, New York, NY, Plenum Press, (1976) 11. Lee Jin-Hyung and Scott D., For better or worse? A structural model of the benefits and costs associated with recreational specialization, Leisure Sciences, 28, (2006) 12. Chul J., Miyoung K. and Sanghoon O., An examination of the relationship between serious leisure tendency and leisure motivation, Journal of Tourism Sciences, 35, (2011) 13. Herman Z.T., Serious leisure and leisure motivations among self-identified cyclists, Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Management, 3(1-2), (2015) 14. Pi L.L., Lin Y.H., Chen C.Y., Chiu J.C. and Chen Y.M., Serious leisure, motivation to volunteer and subjective well-being of volunteers in recreational events, Social Indicators Research, 119(3), (2014) 15. Scott D., Ditton R.B., Eubanks T.R. and Stoll J.R., Measuring specialization among birders: Utility of a self-classification measure, Human Dimensions of Wild Life, 10(65), (2005) 16. Lee Su.H., Graefe A.R. and Li C.L., The effects of specialization and gender on motivations and preferences for site attributes in paddling, Leisure Sciences, 29, (2007) 17. Tsaur S.H. and Liang Y.W., Serious leisure and recreation specialization, Leisure Science, 30(4), (2008) 18. Lee S.W. and Scott D., Empirical linkages between serious leisure and recreational specialization, Human Dimensions of Wild Life, 18, (2013) 19. Hulland J., Use of partial least squares (PLS) in strategic management research: A review of four recent studies, Strategic Management Journal, 20, (1999) 20. Fornell C. and Larcker D.F., Evaluating structural equations models with unobservable variables and measurement error, Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), (1981) 21. Hair J.F., Black W.C., Babin B.J. and Anderson R.E., Multivariate data analysis, 7 th ed., Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall (2010) 22. Venkatesh V., Thong J.Y.T. and Xu, Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: Extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, MIS Quarterly, 36(1), (2012) 23. Nunnally J.C. and Bernstein I.H., Psychometric theory, 3 rd ed., New York, McGraw-Hill (1994) 24. Scott, Serious Leisure and recreation specialization, An uneasy marriage, Leisure Sciences, 34, (2012). (Received 03 rd December 2017, accepted 10 th January 2018) 11