Study Guide

Factors affecting personal participation in sports and tourism, including affluence, gender, stage in lifecycle, personality, place of residence.

1. Affluence

We have already covered this in previous lessons - check the previous page to check on this. 
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2. Gender

Gender is an influence in the decisions made by men and women in tourism, sport and leisure. The resources below focus on female participation in sport. Watch and explore the resources and then consider these questions:

1. What is the difference between the number of adult men and women who participate in sport?
2. How do each of the following factors contribute to this:
   1. Physiology
   2. Media portrayal of men and women in sport
   3. Family 
   4. Societal pressure eg religion/tradition

Gender and tourism
What are the key points in the article below.

3. Life cycle stage

The decisions people make about leisure and tourism will be affected by their age and their family status. A single 30 year old woman with no children is likely to have different options than a woman of the same age with a partner and children for example; why is this the case? What factors will be different for the two women?

Study the table below which is one perspective on life cycles. 

1. Create your own copy of the table (or open the word doc linked from the image).
2. Work in pairs to suggest what kind of tourism and leisure you think each group is likely to choose and why? As you do this consider the reasons why it is not a simple process.
3. Which groups of people are missing from the table? How might their choices be different and why?

4. Personality

The decisions that people make about their personal participation in leisure and tourism will be strongly influenced by their personalities and preferences. Plog (1971) suggested that tourism choices were influenced by psychological factors.

Plog argues that tourist populations are like all other populations and can be characterised along a normal population distribution curve based on people's psychological profile. The profile is likely to affect:

• Desire to travel
• Frequency of travel
• Type of travel
• Destination Choice
• Type of activity

Plog divided people into categories:

1. Allocentric / Venturer
2. Near allocentric / near venturer
3. Centric (two groups Centric Venturer, Centric Dependable)
4. Near Psychocentric / Near Dependable
5. Psychocentric / Dependable

Allocentrics/venturers
A tourist who seeks new experiences and adventure in a wide range of activities. This person is outgoing and self-confident in behavior. An allocentric person prefers to fly and to explore new and unusual areas before others do so. Allocentrics enjoy meeting people from foreign or different cultures. They prefer good hotels and food, but not necessarily modern or chain-type hotels. For a tour package, an allocentric would like to have the basics such as transportation and hotels, but not be committed to a structured itinerary. They would rather have the freedom to explore an area, make their own arrangements and choose a variety of activities and tourist attractions.

Psychocentrics/dependables
A tourist falling in this category is usually non-adventuresome. They prefer to return to familiar travel destinations where they can relax and know what types of food and activity to expect. Such tourists prefer to drive to destinations, stay in typical accommodations, and eat at family-type restaurants.
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1. Study the images below
2. For each image, briefly describe the type of holiday or leisure activity shown.
3. Which personality type from Plog's theory do you think would be most likely to take part in this? Justify your answer?
4. You should have found Q3 challenging; explain why you either needed more information or found it complicated. What does this tell us about the difficulty of classifying people's choices by personality.

5. Place of residence

There are many factors which are associated with place of residence which will affect people's participation in leisure, sport and tourism. These include:

• Availability of facilities eg golf or tennis courses
• Accessibility eg road links, airports, ports
• Political factors eg power of passports or government policy on sport and leisure developments
• Environmental factors eg weather, relief (consider skiing, mountain climbing, beach based leisure)

Explore the Passport Index website and consider the following questions:

• Which countries have the greatest and least freedom of movement?
• What patterns can you identify by continent or by political unions/groups?
• Why do you believe some countries' passports are more "powerful" than others?
• Where does your passport sit in the ranking? Has this affected your decisions?

Synposis...

Read this BBC news story and consider the following questions:

1. What were "Club 18-30" Holidays - who were they aimed at and how does this relate to what you have studied on the factors above?
2. Why have they declined? How does this decline relate to the factors above and why?
3. What is the role of social media in our decisions on our participation in leisure, sport and tourism?