Male and Female Motivations for Participating in a Mass Cycling Race for Amateurs. The Skoda Bike Challenge Case Study

Abstract

The purpose of our research was twofold: to investigate the motivations for participating in a mass cycling event for amateurs and the motivational differences between men and women in cycling. This empirical study involving 385 cyclists was conducted during the fifth edition of the Skoda Bike Challenge held in Poznań in 2018. The event forms part of the UCI Gran Fondo World Series of events organized around the world, which are sanctioned by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). A diagnostic survey method with a standardized interviewing technique was used to interview cyclists. The interview questionnaire was divided according to the MPAM-R scale (Motives for Physical Activity Measure–Revised). This scale assesses people’s motives for participating in physical activities. The following motivations were examined: appearance, fitness, social, competence/challenge, and enjoyment. Descriptive statistics were used. A chi-square test was used to determine characteristics between responses. Cramer’s φ for statistically significant scores was indicated. The research results show some differences between male and female motives for competitive amateur cycling. Statistically significant differences were found between the following motives: interest/enjoyment, competence/challenge, and fitness. This is important information from the point of view of promoting cycling and for organizers of cycling events in regions wishing to promote sports tourism as a form of sustainable development. An understanding of mass cycling motivations is needed, as such knowledge can be used to encourage cycling, which has a potentially positive effect on future cyclists’ physical and mental health. Learning about cycling motivations also allows us to determine which physical and mental health functions are fulfilled by mass sporting events and how to prepare for them. The motives for participating in mass cycling events for amateurs in Europe constitute an interesting field of research. The first part of the paper presents the literature review related to cycling in the context of motivations, sporting events, tourism, event management, and sustainable development, and the second part presents the results of our empirical study.

Do Years of Running Experience Influence the Motivations of Amateur Marathon Athletes?

“…The main reasons for them to take part in a race were related to social motives [38], whereas affiliation and social recognition had the lowest scores in our research. Apart from ultra-marathoners, athletes' motives for participation have been analysed in other endurance sports, such as cycling, for which the main participation motives were health-related in women and performance-related in men [51], partly in line with our results.…”

The Impact of Modern Ultramarathons on Shaping the Social Identity of Runners. The Case Study of Karkonosze Winter Ultramarathon

“…The dynamic development of mass sports events comes with questions about the motivations of the postmodern man to participate in them. Recently, researchers focused mainly on mass, popular, street runs/cycling events in the context of their meaning for sporting events and active tourism or in the context of motivation for running/cycling or health implications for runners/cyclists [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Sporting events have been analyzed as a tourist phenomenon [30][31][32][33][34] and the social identity of athletes is rarely investigated in this area.…”

Do Sex, Age, and Marital Status Influence the Motivations of Amateur Marathon Runners? The Poznan Marathon Case Study

“…The latter gather thousands of people with different levels of skill who are keen to run such a distance ( Buning and Walker, 2016 ). Due to this popularity, a wide-ranging approach has analyzed these mass sports events, in an attempt to describe, among other aspects: the physical health benefits of running ( Hulteen et al, 2017 ; Oja et al, 2017 ; Mujika-Alberdi et al, 2018 ; Kozlovskaia et al, 2019 ); psychological benefits and mental change ( Mazyarkin et al, 2019 ), finding, for instance, that marathon runners’ mental health was better than that of non-athletes ( Raglin, 2007 ; Boudreau and Giorgi, 2010 ); endurance running performance-related research ( Ferrer et al, 2015 ); social, tourism, and leisure-related research ( Shipway and Jones, 2007 ; Waśkowski, 2011 ; Nowak and Chalimoniuk-Nowak, 2015 ; Summers et al, 2016 ; Malchrowicz-Mośko and Rozmiarek, 2018 ; Malchrowicz-Mośko et al, 2019 ), coaching-related research ( Malchrowicz-Mośko and Rozmiarek, 2018 ), and research involving analyzing psychosocial factors related to marathon running ( Summers et al, 2016 ); and psychological motivational characteristics of amateur or recreational runners ( Larumbe et al, 2009 ; Hammer and Podlog, 2016 ).…”

“…A distinction is thus drawn between certain groups with specific characteristics that need to be taken into account when organizing an endurance event ( Buning and Walker, 2016 ). In this regard, a great body of literature has tried to describe the reasons that have led athletes to take part in different sports endurance events, e.g., triathlons ( Croft et al, 1999 ; Wicker and Weimar, 2012 ; López-Fernández et al, 2014 ; Myburgh et al, 2014 ) and cycling events ( Lachausse, 2006 ; Heesch et al, 2012 ; Malchrowicz-Mośko et al, 2019 ). Apart from the previously cited sporting contexts, the Motivations of Marathoners Scale (MOMS), developed by Masters et al (1993) , has been used in different running contexts, such as adventure races ( Doppelmayr and Molkenthin, 2004 ), a 5 km running event ( Bell and Stephenson, 2014 ), half marathons ( Bell and Stephenson, 2014 ; Malchrowicz-Mośko et al, 2018 ), and ultramarathons ( Doppelmayr and Molkenthin, 2004 ; Frick, 2011 ; Malchrowicz-Mośko and Rozmiarek, 2018 ; Waśkiewicz et al, 2019a ), and for trying to distinguish athletes’ reasons for participation depending on the distance, comparing half marathon, full marathon, and ultramarathon runners’ reasons for participation ( Hanson et al, 2015 ).…”