An investigation of involvement in serious leisure, recreation specialization, and sport tourism of diving participants in Taiwan

Abstract

This study aimed at exploring the factors that affected diving participants to engage in sport tourism. The structure of this research and the survey instrument were developed based upon theories and empirical analysis research that were concerning serious leisure, recreation specialization, and sport tourism. The research subjects were the diving participants in Taiwan who were investigated by adopting questionnaire survey instrument in the study. The Distribution and collection questionnaires were processed on site at the recreation areas and at diving centers as well; a total of 341 valid questionnaires were collected. Based on statistical analysis, this study found as follows: (1) Serious leisure, recreational specialization, and sport tourism were positively correlated. (2) There were significant differences existed in the different demographic characteristics of participants in diving. Based on the findings, suggestions were given on operations for practitioners in water-based recreation industry, and the scarcity of present reference that called for the development of future studies on the domain of adventure recreation was implicated.