Recreational motivation, sensation seeking, and recreational involvement of Taiwan's adventure recreation participants.

摘要

The field of adventure recreation has been studied for a long time in some parts of the world; however, in Taiwan, this field of research has been explored for only a few years within limited areas. Most current studies in Taiwan have focused on only one single sport, such as rock climbing, scuba diving, and surfing. In Taiwan, adventure recreation still has many dimensions that need to be studied.; This research used a quantitative approach to investigate the relationships among individual behaviors of sensation seeking and recreational motivation and recreational involvement among the adventure sports of Paragliding, Mountaineering, Scuba Diving, Surfing, and Rock Climbing and demographic characteristics in Taiwan. The survey instruments included the Recreation Experience Preference (REP) by Driver (1976) to measure recreational motivation; Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) by Zuckerman (1994) to measure sensation seeking ability; and Involvement Profile Scale (IPS) by Havitz and Dimanche (1997) to measure the levels of recreational involvement. A stratified random sample collection method was used with 416 adventure participants.; Factor analysis was conducted to ensure each item presented its own factor; Cronbach's alpha was used to verify reliability. In the major focuses of this study, participants' recreational motivation, sensation seeking, and demographics served as the independent variables while the recreational involvement served as the dependent variable.; The result showed that: (a) there was no significant correlation between demographic characteristics (gender, age, occupation, marital status, education, salary, year(s) of participation, skill level, frequency, expenditures, and travel time); (b) age, gender, education, year(s) of participation, and skill level were significant predictors of sensation seeking; (c) age, skill level, and frequency were significant contributors to recreational involvement; (d) recreational motivation of relaxation and interaction with peers were significant predictors of recreational involvement; (e) thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, and susceptibility to boredom were significant predictors of recreational involvement; (f) recreational motivation and sensation seeking were significant predictors of recreational involvement; (g) age, marital status, year(s) of participation, skill level, and frequency were dependent of the level of recreational involvement.