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
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