Extreme Sports Motivation

Extreme Sports Motivational Factors Lawrence Cannon December 4, 2011 PE 5880 Abstract In the 1970s, extreme sports had been growing rapidly since its introduction. However, there has been little research done on extreme sport participants. In specific, the reason why consumers participate in extreme sports has not yet been investigated, although the number of participants and spectators of extreme sports is rapidly growing. Since motivation is a significant factor of sport participation behavior, it is essential for the sport marketer to understand psychological needs and motivations of extreme sport participants.

The purpose of this study is to analyze motivational factors of people who become involved in extreme sports. The researchers modified and applied the scale of sports participant motivation. The original scale includes forty one items which represent many motivational factors like achievement, competition, social facilitation, skill mastery, physical fitness, risk-taking, affiliation, aesthetics, aggression, value development, self-esteem, self-actualization, and stress release.

A total of several samples will be included in the current study. The researcher collected the cases at the X Game Sports and Freestyle Motocross World Championships held in the United States. A chain of ANOVA and MANOVA tests will contain the data analyses. The hypothesis will suggest that extreme sport participants have a high level of motivation in fun and imitation, which are two more structures added to the original scales.

The analysis of the data may also reveal that motivation of extreme sport participants vary across gender and past experience. This study will advance the knowledge base of consumer motivation research in the field of sport marketing and provides leaders in the extreme sport industry with meaningful implications. At the end of the day, the result of present studies will support the extreme sports industry in predicting the trend of action sports consumer behavior. Introduction

Extreme sports are “activities that either ideologically or practically provide alternatives to mainstream sports and mainstream sport values” (Rinehart, 2000, p 506). The increased number of events and participants in extreme sports support the trend of growth in extreme sports (Liberman, 2004; Ostrowski, 2002). In the 2002 statistics, about eighty-six million people were participating in extreme sports (Ostrowski, 2002). According to American Sports Data, within the U. S. port industry, extreme sport generated one-third of sporting goods sales, which totaled to more than $14 billion (Liberman, 2004). Although the overall number of sport participants in the U. S. has increased about ten percent over the last decade, the number of participants and spectators in dominant sports such as basketball and volleyball has decreased (Stotlar, 2002). This trend in the sport industry further supports that emerging sport activities such as extreme sports gain their popularity by becoming mainstream sports (Kress, 2003; Ostrowski, 2002).

While the increased interest in motivational factors draws scholars to conduct research to investigate psychological principles of dominant sport participants, research on sport consumers in extreme sports has not been a main focus of investigation within academic area of sport management and marketing. Hereafter, there is very little information in the literature regarding the characteristics of extreme sports and its consumer’s behavior. Considering the current trend and the future prospect of extreme sports, scientific and systematic analysis of sport consumers in the extreme sport industry needs to be conducted.

In particular, in order to continue and improve the profitability and productivity of the extreme sport market, sport marketers should have better understanding of the fundamental needs and wants of extreme sports participants. Needs of Study The study of motivation in sports has been conducted in various segments such as general physical activities. As the market becomes competitive within the extreme sport industry, the lack of experiential research on sport consumers, the results will widen the gap between the academic and the practical field of knowledge regarding extreme sport consumers.

To fill this gap within the sport industry and sport study, there is just as much need to explore the motivation of sport consumption. Without any understanding of the motives of sport customers, sport marketers cannot successfully achieve their marketing outcomes. Thus, an investigation of what motivates sport consumption would be the first step for future development of the action sport industry. Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze motivational factors of people who become involved in extreme sports.

This study will advance the knowledge base of consumer motivation research in the field of sport marketing and provide implications for sport marketers within the emerging sport industry. This study is meaningful because the consumption motivation provides a more in-depth useful tool for determining the behavior of consumers than asking “why” (Beck, 1990). The Significance of the Study The goal of this study is to develop a better understanding of extreme sports consumers and action sport itself, then further investigate motivational factors of participants in action sports.

Moreover, this research contributes to the extreme sport industry and the field of sport marketing by developing a knowledge base of extreme sport participants. Literature Review The literature review on the extreme sports industry regards the demographics, trends, characteristics of the sport consumer behavior and motivation of spectators, as well as participation in general sports. Through the process of reviewing motives of sport participants, the researcher will investigate the growth factors of extreme sports in business and the following importance of the motivation study: What is extreme sports?

Who are targets? Why do people participate in extreme sports as consumers? What is the value of the motivational factors in sport concepts? Extreme sports are defined as a relatively new form of sport or “a combination of extraordinary individual achievement and unmatched personal enjoyment” (Rinehart & Sydnor, 2003, p. 3). Another interpretation for extreme sports is mostly individual sports that have risk, danger or unconventional rules or techniques which differ from dominant team sports (Bennett, Henson & Zhang, 2002). While dominant team sports like ootball and baseball are rooted in a traditional value such as cooperation, teamwork, character-building and group competition. The various types of sports that are called extreme sports are roller-blading, windsurfing, sky diving, dancing, surfing, BMX, mountain biking, eco-challenging, kayaking, white water sports, climbing, surfing, skateboarding, extreme skiing and snowboarding (Rinehart & Sydnor, 2003). Thus, extreme sports participants or athletes often perform daredevil acrobatic stunts which are dangerous at high speed.

They tend to show off skills for spectators and stimulate viewers to try to be like. Motivation is defined as an act of instance of motivating, or providing with a reason to act in a certain way which serves as a factor in determining an individual’s behavior or social conduct in a given situation. As a mentioned that the motive of motivation study for consumers is based on aim to discover how influences the past or present behavior on current decision making of the consumer. In general, motivation is important tool for understanding consumer behavior.

There are some words that have been introduced to the general public, such as; “dizzying,” “hyper caffeinated,” or “edgy, adrenaline- inducing pursuits” are used to describe their experience with extreme sports. They are conversant with the language of dominant sports (Spiegel, 1998). In the year 2003, Howe describe some extreme sports as having grown out of the board sport culture of snowboarding, derived from surfing and skateboarding (Howe, 2003). In the same way, there are many examples of new unoriginal typical sports like; BMX racing and mountain biking are rooted in cycling.

Others are barefoot water skiing stems from traditional water skiing. In-line skating was developed from roller skating. In the journal article “Gender Differences in Beliefs about the Influence of Ability and Effort in Sport and Physical Activity” their study was to explore the different gender in reasoning about the relationships between natural ability, effort, practice, and final skill level, performance across sixteen physical activities at both recreational levels. Their participants were one hundred fifty three college students that had enrolled six physical activity classes.

They completed two questionnaires. Their results indicated that in physical activity domains, male students tended to have a much better natural tempo ability that as a more significant for successful skill level and performance as female students did. Their beliefs seemed to vary for activities that are gender-linked. For all the participants, natural ability was viewed as more important at the recreational level. A strategy for practitioners and coaches was to use encouragement beliefs for effectiveness of developing a challenging for conception of sports as gender-typed and promoting the concept of sports for all.

In the journal article “The Extreme Sports of Research”, Mr. Bartoletti discusses the steps shared from several members of the “Team Extreme Research” group and how their methods and practices went. The group talked about how extreme sports are having a major impact on youth sport activities. School-age athletes are attracted to the fun and excitement of extreme sports such as snowboarding, BMX cycling, and skateboarding. One of the original extreme sporting events, pole vaulting, is a unique and exciting event that has been part of the scholastic track and field program for more than half a century.

What I found in “Situational state balances and participation motivation in youth sport: A reversal theory perspective” Their purpose of their study was to examine the relationship between situational state balances and motives for sport and physical activity participation in adolescents using the theoretical framework of reversal theory. Their participation motives and the interacting factors of their situational state balances, gender, and level of participation were examined. The secondary school students were ages about fourteen to twenty years old who participated in competitive or recreational sport.

The factor analysis were the participation motives yielded factors to which ANOVAs and MANOVAs were applied with situational state balance, gender, and participation level as independent variables. Their factor analysis resulted in seven motive factors: status, team, friend, excitement, challenge, skill, energy release, fitness, and situational factors. Their ANOVAs and MANOVAs indicated significant differences in the sport motives between the situational state balances, genders, and levels of participation, and between pairs of situational state balance groups in males and females of competitive and recreational level.

Methodology The purpose of this is to identify suitable methodological procedures. The methodology is described be the relation to the following aspects of the study: survey instrument scale, the research of the questionnaire and ANOVAs and MANOVAs data analysis procedures. Questions 1) What are the extreme sports motivational factors for the participants? 2) How many different motivational factors are there in extreme sports by gender and experience? Proceed of Study I will apply a survey instrument which was developed by McDonald, Milne and Hong, in 2003.

This will be examined to measure motivational factors of extreme sports participants because the existing scale is focused on motivations of both several sports participants and spectators. The survey instrument was modified by wording changes from existing scale through a field test and panel of experts and item purification through a trial test. As a second step for modifying the existing scale, a trial test was employed to test reliability of the survey instrument.

The revised instrument by panel of experts was administrated to a representative sample of the target population. The researcher selected a convenience sample of students from the Sport Management classes of a large University. The participants of trial test will not be included in the final sample. The format for the survey instrument will be a seven-point format ranging from “1-10 grading scale. ” With one being the lowest and ten begin the highest. Then a questionnaire will be applied of two parts.

First, respondents will be asked to provide their demographic information and experiences regarding to extreme sports, such as gender, ethnic background, age, level of participants in action sports, a period of time that participation in extreme sports and type of extreme sports what they have participated in. The second part contained items of motivational factors in relation to participation in extreme sports. The survey instrument contains several items with many motivation scales. The researcher will scheduled for data collection from extreme sport competition at the X Game Sports, Freestyle Motocross World Championships.

This competition, part of the Extreme Sports Championships, features the season-ending World Championships events for skateboarding, BMX, inline skating and freestyle motocross. The researcher sampled from the audiences who are interest in participating in extreme sports. The size of sample will deal with the age ranges between13-35. The researcher employed trained staffs to survey at the competition. Each staff will provide survey packets, each containing a questionnaire, a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study and directions for completing the questionnaire, and pens.

The survey instrument includes the following information: personal information, the purpose of the study, confidentiality, directions on responding to questions, and appreciation for the respondent’s cooperation. In the actual survey, the trained staff for the survey introduces the purpose of the study and explains specific procedures and methods to the subject before the data collection to minimize the non-response data missing. At this point, the collected data will be analyzed by using ANOVA and MANOVA to identify the significance of motivational factors of action sports participants. Discussions

It is important for sports marketers to understand basic needs of sport consumers. In particular, it is necessary to investigate the sport consumption motivation in extreme sport based upon their demographic and psychographic characteristics (Bennett, Henson, & Zhang, 2003). However, there has not been organized research on extreme sport consumption motivation. This study examined motivation for extreme sports participants. Sport marketers may utilize this proposal to develop effective marketing strategies like market segmentation, differentiated program service offering to satisfy the needs and wants of extreme sports consumers.

These results strengthen the relation between each groups and motivation factors to contribute to sport motivation studies. The unique contribution of the present study is verifying two new motivational factors; fun, enjoyment, trend and imitation. I think that the results may show that the mean score of fun and enjoyment will be the highest for both male and female groups although there was no significant difference between these two groups. Extreme sports participants will rate their fun and enjoyment as the most important motive and considerable effects.

Thus, that I did hypothesized that some participants in extreme sports might be involved in the activities based upon their elective choice for fun and enjoyment. Also, the mean score of trend and imitation may be somewhat high for gender groups and experience groups. I have recognized that younger people who are interested in winter sports such as skiing or skating move to new sports such as snowboarding and extreme skiing. The researcher considered that younger people attempt to follow their peer group not only for fashion or music trend but also for sports activities.

With this happening the researcher made a decision to try to investigate by adding the trend and imitation to the existing motivation scale. Another important finding is that different characteristics of extreme sports like fun, enjoyment, risk-taking and aesthetics were rated higher than other motivational factors by extreme sports participants including, particularly among male and the expert-level experience groups. This outcome suggests that sport marketers in extreme sports should develop differentiated marketing strategies focused on male participants and expert-level participants.

In general, an extreme sport has been considered to be emerging sports just for our generation. However, this study suggests different point of view for sports marketers and scholars. Interestingly, all board-sports like snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing in this study, these extreme sports ranked top three among thirteen types of extreme sports. It will allow academics and practitioners in extreme sports to accompany with other leading or traditional sports because extreme sports have its origin to the board culture, which has a long history (Howe, 1998).

For this reason, sport marketers at the extreme sports industry may able to use the marketing strategies for leading sports as cross-promotion for extreme sports focusing on the targeted consumers. At the end of the day, the discussion of the present study will support practioners in the extreme sports industry in predicting the consumption behavior of action sports participants. Further, the present study may lead sports marketers and managers to utilize the motives found for effective marketing strategies. Accordingly, sport marketers in extreme sports could highlight their targeted promotion with present study ideas.

To promote and move the sports consumer for successful sport marketing, the motivation based knowledge is the first step to be studied by scholars. For the future studies, I will apply ethnic background groups and different extreme sports events participant groups regarding extreme sports consumption behavior. Conclusion In conclusion, understanding consumer is fundamental to the marketing concept. This research of motivations factors are an important determinant of extreme sports consumer behavior. Future research is needed to better develop these constructs and explore how motivation can be utilized as a segmenting tool.

Such an understanding might lend itself to predicting the possibility of an individual engaging in various extreme sporting activities. Finally, sport consumption is a complicated activity in which participation and imputer are often twisted. While this study examined participation and imputer separately, future research is needed to under the relations and connections between these consumptions territory. References Bartoletti, S. (2011, April, May). The extreme sport of research. The Horn Book Magazine 87. p. 24-30 Beck, R. C. (1990). The nature of motivation theory.

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