Adventure tourism is a growing market sector worldwide including Australia. A range of
research exists that examined participation in adventure tourism activities by consideration
of various aspects such as socio-demographics, motivations, activity/setting preferences
and involvement in the activity to understand the adventure tourist. While studies have
been conducted that included several of these aspects, a holistic investigation of
involvement, motivations and setting preferences together has not been conducted
previously regarding adventure tourism in Australia in general and SCUBA diving in
particular. Furthermore, in Australia, only limited information is available about those who
participate in the adventure activity of SCUBA diving. The aim of this research is to
investigate differences and similarities of involvement, motivations and setting preferences
of SCUBA diving club members in Eastern Australia.
In this study 294 SCUBA diving club members in New South Wales and Queensland were
surveyed by utilisation of a web-based questionnaire in order to identify their involvement
in SCUBA diving, socio-demographic characteristics, participation motives and setting
preferences.
Descriptive analysis was used to investigate the socio-demographic characteristics of
divers, their motivations and setting preferences. Principal component analysis was applied
on involvement variables as well as motivations to investigate the underlying constructs.
Agglomerative and hierarchical cluster analyses were used to derive clusters of divers that
differed in their involvement in SCUBA diving. Exact Pearson chi-square tests were
conducted to test whether there were significant differences concerning sociodemographics
between clusters. In addition, analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were
conducted to determine differences and similarities of motivational components and setting
preferences between clusters.
This study found that SCUBA diving club members are a heterogeneous group regarding
their involvement in SCUBA diving. Five clusters of divers emerged that differed in their
involvement in SCUBA diving. While differences in socio-demographics across the
different involvement clusters were revealed, they proved to be less valuable for
interpretation purposes. Regarding divers� setting preferences, similar structures were
observed across all clusters regardless of differences in involvement. Motivations showed a
complex structure across the clusters in regard to divers� involvement in SCUBA diving.
Based on the studies findings, recommendations for future research were suggested. These
emphasised the need for a holistic examination of motivations and setting preferences of
adventure tourists based on the concept of involvement, which would be important for
theory development and segmentation of tourists. The same holistic approach would also
be valuable for examining other types of tourists such as events tourists and heritage
tourists to better understand tourist behaviour.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219538 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Tschapka, Michael Karl, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Languages, International Studies & Tourism |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Michael Karl Tschapka |
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