Negotiating leisure constraints: the case of an amateur musician with epilepsy

The purpose of this case study was to identify the negotiation strategies employed by an epileptic amateur musician engaged in serious leisure to overcome leisure constraints. Data were collected by semi-structured interview, observation and informal interaction. Results revealed that the subject employed various cognitive (i.e. anticipating benefits, weighing pros and cons, immediate resolving, accepting costs and pragmatism about performance) and behavioural (i.e. planning/event management, scaling back participation and communication and cooperation) negotiation strategies. While strategies were employed to overcome constraints, participation was also facilitated by individual beliefs and interpersonal relationships. Results also suggested that negotiation strategies are interconnected, and that perceived stigma did not influence participation in serious leisure.     

Saving golf courses from business troubles

Utilizing a discrete choice experiment, this study attempts to provide improved knowledge regarding how golf tourists arrive at complex trade-offs between different golfing constraints and resort to diverse negotiation strategies to attenuate the effect of those constraining factors. With a study sample of Korean golf tourists, we find that respondents place distinctive weights on several golf course attributes representing various types of golfing constraints to attain the greatest enjoyment. Among a range of barriers to golf trip participation, golf tourists place the highest importance on structural constraints associated with limited personal time resources and inadequate access to golf courses. The study results substantiate golf tourists’ heterogeneous preferences for negotiation strategies, which are dependent upon their levels of golf specialization. Multiple management suggestions are developed to help golf course professionals adapt to the gradually challenging business environment.     

Bridging the Conceptual Frameworks of Constraints Negotiation and Serious Leisure to Understand Leisure Benefit Realization

Constraints negotiation and serious leisure are two major conceptual frameworks that have developed independently to understand individuals’ leisure participation. Although discrete ideas, they are conceptually similar in light of the fact that they address individuals’ leisure pursuits to attain various desirable benefits. The most important connections between these two frameworks lie in their assertion of different challenges inherent in leisure pursuits together with the need for serious efforts to reach leisure goals. Using a sample of Wisconsin anglers, the goal of this study is to better understand individuals’ benefit realization process by jointly examining the two conceptual frameworks of constraints negotiation and serious leisure. The study results suggest that negotiation strategies or efforts, which are at the center of both perspectives, play a key role in realizing diverse beneficial outcomes and developing unique leisure identities.     

Golf tourists in South Africa: A demand-side study of a niche market in sports tourism

The targeting of tourism market segments is considered to increase repeat visitations to tourism destinations because it allows destination marketers to accurately determine the needs and expectations of targeted tourists, develop more effective marketing strategies, which in turn, assists with ensuring that the targeted tourists segments support and return to the destination. Consequently, the aim of the study was to determine the profile of golf tourists attending an international golf event in South Africa by shedding some light on their key trip-related and general golf tourism behaviour patterns. To date, most research undertaken has focused on product-driven research concerned with golf course facilities and the marketing thereof and little emphasis on demand-side research concerning the golf tourist. Personal interviews were conducted using a structured questionnaire involving 314 golf tourists selected through a systematic random sampling technique. The paper investigates the level of development of golf tourism, analyses the golf tourism market and highlights critical factors for its success, in South Africa.     

Choosing Virtual – Rather than Real – Leisure Activities: An Examination of the Decision–making Process in Screen-Golf Participants

The objective of this study is to apply Ajzen's theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explicate the intention-formation process in the playing of screen golf. The study investigated how players' favorable/unfavorable attitudes toward screen golf, the social pressures they perceive related to screen golf, and their senses of capability and resources to play screen golf interact to build up or undercut the intention to play this virtual version of the sport. An Internet-based survey and field survey were conducted. Overall, the findings indicated that the fit of the proposed model was satisfactory, and that the proposed model involving the original variables in the TPB and past behavior effectively explained golfers' intention formation. In addition, golfers' concerns about the environment were found to be a moderator in forming their intention. This study illuminated the psychological and social factors that may influence recreation consumers to choose a “virtual”, rather than “real”, leisure activity.     

What makes a motorsports event enjoyable? The case of Macau Grand Prix

This article aims to identify the key product attributes that make a motorsport event enjoyable. Using data collected in the 2010 Macau Grand Prix, a factor analysis was conducted on 15 variables that spectators were asked of their level of agreement to how these elements constitute an enjoyable event. The analysis returned four major variables of a product that spectators believe will make an enjoyable motorsport event, specifically, event amenities, event aesthetics, event ambience, and event tickets. This study contributes to the understanding of event product attributes.     

The Impact of the Causality between Work–Family Conflict,Well–Being,and Leisure Coping Strategies on Tour Professionals

This study is to investigate the impact of the causality between work–family conflict (WFC), well-being, and leisure coping strategies on tour professionals, and to verify the regulating role played by leisure coping strategies. The results suggest that when a tour professional experiences a high degree of WFC, perceived well-being is reduced. Applying leisure coping strategies affects the well-being of tour professionals to a high degree, and significantly regulates the relationship between WFC and well-being. To emphasize the role of internal marketing, this study concludes that leisure coping strategies must incorporate measures that provide direct benefits to tour professionals.     

Leisure consumption in cricket: devising a model to contrast forms and time preferences

A large body of research exists on the motivation to follow sporting and leisure events. However, the main focus of these studies has been on those who attend events (direct consumers). Little research has extended the investigation of sporting and leisure consumption to include those who consume sport by other means such as the media (indirect consumers) and their scheduling preferences. With the growth of indirect consumption and its importance from both a finance and marketing perspective, this is an area of increasing interest in sports and leisure management. The purpose of this paper is to examine the consumption of sport in the UK and time and form preferences of spectators. We develop and validate a four-dimensional model to measure spectators’ consumption, empirically testing it using 632 questionnaires in the context of cricket. Our findings show that although there was a stronger preference for direct consumption, there was a greater engagement in indirect consumption forms. A number of these activities, such as following the sport on the Internet are peripheral to the actual game and complement consumption of the match. A further finding of the research was that weekend consumption was most favoured by those who were more involved in the sport as club members. They expressed a stronger preference for Friday evening and Sunday scheduling for two different competitions.     

Impact of Tourism Openness Across the Taiwan Strait: Perspective of Mainland Chinese Tourists

ABSTRACT

Millennials, who are different from the older generations in leisure and consumption propensities, constitute more than 30% of the global population. The increase in the proportion of millennials in the population has motivated national museums in Korea to implement a new operational strategy for attracting this generation. Using data envelopment analysis, this study reveals that Korean millennials are more interested in special exhibitions and participatory events compared to the earlier generations. The results also indicate that enhancing the overall revisit rate significantly improves the overall performance of national museums. This study is expected to help museums and event organizers to establish differentiated operational strategies according to visitor types for “what service should be provided for whom.”     

Playing Our Way: Contributions of Social Groups to Women's Continued Participation in Golf

This study builds upon research on leisure based social worlds and recent work identifying the potentially valuable roles of social groups in women's continued participation in recreation. This study is an ethnography of a group of women who regularly played golf. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. The analysis suggested two overarching themes that explained persistence in golf for these women: connecting with group members and constructing a group culture. Importantly, the processes that facilitated the development of group connections were also identified, thereby adding a further understanding of how socializing is made possible in leisure contexts.     

Going for gold as a leisure tourism continuum: clustering motivations for gold panning revisit intention

The way in which people use their spare time differs. Leisure activities and tourism are among the most common of these. Gold panning is a rather unusual niche leisure and tourism activity. Despite some differences, leisure and tourism are generally interrelated in many ways, thus gold panning, is a good example of the leisure tourism continuum. In this study, gold panning is considered as a set of leisure activities within the context of tourism. The aim of the paper is to determine the profile of a gold panner based on their motivations. Therefore, respondents are clustered by means of motivation into two homogenous groups defined as ‘nature seekers’ and ‘true gold panners’. The results suggest that the clusters differ significantly with regards to age, education and marital status, but also in terms of the degree of interest in gold and revisit intention. The originality of the research lies in the fact that gold panning as a leisure activity has seldom been explored under the guise of a leisure and tourist context within existing literature, especially through the means of quantitative research.     

Keeping it liminal. The Mondiali Antirazzisti (Anti-racist World Cup) as a multifocal interaction ritual

This paper examines how social mixing and celebration of diversity can be enabled through sports festivals marked by their carnivalesque atmosphere. Our analysis draws on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the Mondiali Antirazzisti (Anti-racist World Cup), a non-competitive football tournament and intercultural festival featuring the yearly participation of hardcore football fans (ultras), migrant groups, third-sector associations and other informal groups. We consider how the multifocal ritual form of the event helps to create a liminal space in which discrimination and stereotypes can be temporarily challenged. The sources of collective effervescence are multiplied by placing sport games within a wider range of other leisure and cultural activities, thus promoting internal diversity and the inclusion of outsiders. Additionally, social boundaries are also blurred by not emphasising the competitive dimension of the sporting activities, making sporting categorisations more fluid, and breaking down the separation between protagonists and spectators. Nonetheless, considering the transient character of liminality, we also investigate problems and limitations implied by the pursuit of these objectives. It is concluded that, despite a certain degree of self-referentiality, the festival fosters the spreading of anti-discriminatory cultures by enhancing the participants’ reflexivity and feeding their commitment in generating spin-off activities in different local contexts.     

Giving young people a well-rounded education: a study of the educational goals parents attach to the leisure activities of their children

Policymakers strongly stimulate young people’s participation in organised leisure activities because it is believed to provide young people with important ‘work’ skills and attitudes. Special attention is paid to the underrepresented working-class youth. To stimulate (especially working-class) parents to play an active ‘guiding’ role, policymakers often assume that they have to be made aware of the educational benefits of engagement in leisure activities. The empirical basis of this assumption is, however, thin. Therefore, this study examined the educational goals middle- and working-class parents attach to their adolescents’ leisure activities on the basis of 32 interviews conducted in a small city in Belgium. Although there were subtle socio-economic differences in some goals parents pursued through their children’s leisure activities (i.e. teaching skills and societal values and norms, belonging to a peer group, independent thinking and relaxation), these were not of a magnitude that they could contribute to our understanding of socio-economic differences in parents’ role and in turn, in young people’s leisure use. We argue that further research needs to focus on socio-economic differences in available resources from which parents construct particular strategies to shape their young people’s leisure spending.     

Golfers in Colorado

Abstract

Tourism, and specifically golf, continue to be major drivers to the Colorado economy, especially in relatively high natural amenity areas. However, it is not clear that tourism promotion and broader golf marketing strategies are effectively aimed given the evolving nature of golf consumers and their visitation patterns, even though this is an important external force impacting the industry. The objective of this research is to develop a set of golfer profiles for Colorado to assist in the development of promotional strategies differentially targeted at in-state and traveling golfers.     

Tourists’ Perceptions of London,United Kingdom (UK), as a Safe Host City During the 2012 Olympic Games

The Olympic Games 2012 provided the host city London with the opportunity to showcase its cultural diversity and world-class tourist attractions. However, the build-up to the world’s largest sporting event attracted considerable negative publicity primarily related to security at the Games, namely terrorism and its potential to disrupt the spectacle. Intercept interviews were carried out with 354 spectators during the Games at public viewing sites and key tourist attractions to elicit the perceptions of London as a safe host city. The findings demonstrate that visitors to the Olympics perceived London to be safe, in terms of both crime and terrorism, with positive consequences for their future plans to revisit London. Ultimately, a better understanding of spectators’ perceptions of safety and security of the Games can help improve communication messages to combat misperceptions in an effort to increase tourist arrivals to host cities during the staging of mega-events and after such events.     

Segmentation of Mega Event Motivation: The Case of Expo 2010 Shanghai China

The purpose of this study was to examine the motives of Chinese nationals who attended the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China, and to understand their perceptions about service quality, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. The results of this study revealed six motivation factors and three mutually exclusive clusters based on their motives. In particular, the “multipurpose experience seekers” showed more favorable service quality perceptions and higher satisfaction than their counterparts. The three segments based on their motivation also demonstrated significant differences in selected sociodemographic variables, which could be used effectively by the event organizers. Marketing implications and suggestions for attracting visitors to a mega event were presented.     

Benefits of leisure in overcoming gender violence experiences: a case study

This article is based on a case study carried out at Casa Malva, a shelter for female victims of gender violence in Gijón, Asturias (Spain). The study explores the potential therapeutic value of leisure in the process of personal recovery for women living in sheltered accommodation, and the positive impact leisure may have in overcoming a traumatic life event. The study comprised 16 semi-structured interviews with female victims of gender violence and three discussion groups with shelter staff. The article examines the concept of leisure and the potential benefits of leisure activities as part of the Personal Recovery Project (PRP) run by Casa Malva. PRP is an innovative recovery initiative aimed at helping women to overcome situations of gender violence by focusing on areas of experience, such as family, employment and leisure.     

Recreationists’ Constraints Negotiation Process for Continual Leisure Engagement

Unlike prospective participants with desire for initial participation, current participants are likely to have different interest in habitual leisure engagement from participation itself. Accordingly, they may respond to the effects of leisure constraints differently in order to progress toward a higher level of leisure involvement. This study aims to construct a theoretical framework that demonstrates how diverse components of current participants’ constraints negotiation process are conceptually connected to each other. Study results suggest that different negotiation strategies help current participants adjust their willingness to participate in the activity more frequently. Results also denote that the three dimensions of leisure constraints are differently associated with cognitive negotiation strategies, and commitment plays an important role in promoting the use of negotiation strategies to mitigate current participants’ perception of leisure constraints.     

The mediating effect of place attachment on the relationship between golf tourism destination image and revisit intention

Focusing on golf tourism in Hainan Province, this study examined the relationship between place attachment, golf tourism destination image, and revisit intention of golf tourists. Data were obtained using questionnaires distributed to golf tourists in Hainan Province, China in 2016. Survey data from 218 tourists indicated that destination image was positively related to place attachment. Moreover, place attachment mediated the relationship between destination image and revisit intention. Implications of these findings for golf tourism marketing strategies as well as future research directions are discussed.     

Segmenting Overseas Golf Tourists by the Concept of Specialization

A main goal of this study was to use the concept of specialization to segment and better understand Korean overseas golf holiday tourists' demographics, motivations, overseas golf tourism destination attributes, and preference for overseas golf tourism destination attributes. A total of 424 questionnaires were collected and 370 questionnaires were used for further statistical analysis. According to results of data analyses, the advanced segment was more likely to be motivated by the quality of overseas golf resorts and other benefits (such as business opportunities), compared to the beginner and intermediate segments. The beginner group was more likely to be a company employee or housewife who earn the least at between US$35,000–US$50,000 per annum, travel on full package tours, use information from family or relatives, and have a stronger preference for the Philippines or China as golf destinations. The study's results showed potential benefits using the concept of specialization in a sport tourism setting even though the concept has been popularly applied in the outdoor setting.