Socio-demographic characteristics affecting sport tourism choices: A structural model

Abstract

Background: Effective tourism management in the field of sports tourism requires an understanding of differences in socioeconomic characteristics both within and between different market segments. Objective: In the broad tourism market demographic characteristics have been extensively analyzed for differences in destination choices, however little is known about demographic factors affecting sport tourists' decisions. Methods: A sample of Slovenian sports tourists was analyzed using data from a comprehensive survey of local and outbound tourist activity conducted by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia in 2008. After data weighting the information for 353,783 sports related trips were available for analysis. The research model adopted suggests that four socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, level of education and income) significantly affect a tourist's choice of sports related travel either locally within Slovenia or to a foreign country. Furthermore the destination (local or foreign) has an influence on the choice of the type of accommodation selected and the tourist's total expenditure for the trip. For testing the first part of our model (the socio-demographic characteristics effects) a linear regression was used, and for the final part of the model (the selection of accommodation type and travel expenditure) t-test were applied. Results: The result shows the standardized ß regression coefficients are all statistically significant at the .001 level for the tested socio-demographic characteristics and also the overall regression model was statistically significant at .001 level. Conclusions: With these results the study confirmed that all the selected socio-demographic characteristics have a significant influence on the sport-active tourist when choosing between a domestic and foreign tourism destination which in turn affect the type of accommodation chosen and the level of expenditure while travelling.

Use of the pathfinder network scaling to measure online customer reviews: A theme park study

“…Previous studies on visitor experiences in theme parks indicate that, following two‐dimensional matrix IPA model (Martilla & James, ) and SERVQUAL instrument (Zeithaml, Berry, & Parasuraman, ) which attempted to set five variables for evaluating a service (i.e., tangibility, reliability, assurance, responsiveness, and empathy), many other scholars kept on developing refined tools and adding new variables in order to measure and evaluate a service quality in a more comprehensive approach in the theme park industry (Brown, Churchill Jr, & Peter, ; Oh, ; Slak Valek, Shaw, & Bednarik, ; Van Ree, ) while other researchers attempted to investigate customer's satisfaction from the perspective of safety, security, and environment uniqueness (Pikkemaat & Schuckert, ). Similarly, Tsang et al () notified that assurance, empathy, and responsiveness are key factors to predict the theme park visitors' satisfaction levels.…”

Active Sport Tourism in Europe: Applying Market Segmentation Model Based on Human Values

“…Sport participation and consumption motives should be examined as a multidimensional construct, comprising multiple psychosociological factors including motivation and satisfaction issues as well as demographic factors (Hungenberg et al, 2016; Rohm et al, 2006). Hence, sociodemographic characteristics were important for defining clusters in sport tourism (Finn, 2012; Slak Valek et al, 2014). The study found certain differences across active sport clusters in terms of sociodemographic characteristics of three identified clusters.…”

“…Group identity was deeply explored aiming to differ each group from other consumer segments, and consequently, many different motivational scales were argued in the literature (Hodeck & Hovemann, 2016;Hungenberg et al, 2016;Kim & Ritchie, 2012;Slak Valek et al, 2014). Recent studies suggested using specially designed Sport and Tourism Motivational Scale to explain the main reasons for active sport tourism consumption and to indicate unique market segments.…”

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Análisis de los criterios de importancia y motivación para la elección de centros deportivos en función de variables sociodemográficas (Analysis of importance and motivation criteria for choosing sports centres according to socio-demographic variables)

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