PhD, Associate Professor L.N. Rogaleva¹
PhD, Associate Professor S.M. Galysheva¹
PhD, Associate Professor A.V. Shikhov^1
1 Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg

Keywords: sports tourism, personal motivations, motivational setup, situational motivations, self-rating, athletes.

Background. Extreme sport disciplines are getting increasingly popular nowadays in youth communities the world over, with the modern sports tourism ranked high among them – it was recently qualified a formal national sport discipline in Russia [1]. The main goal of a sports tourism competition is to test and perfect the individual/ group sports tourism skills and contribute to the safety standards of the sports tourism movement [4]. Hiking is one of the popular sports tourism disciplines. Some modern hiking competitions are run indoors on artificial high-difficulty terrains that claim much higher physical and mental fitness and emotional control skills from the athletes than most of the natural terrains [10], plus high stress tolerance and determination driven by strong motivations. It should be mentioned, however, that the sports tourism motivations are still largely underexplored, whilst the modern scientific literature is still quite contradictory in interpreting motivations – as the pivotal personality traits on the one hand [2, 3, 9, 11, 13], or the situation-specific mindsets on the other hand [2, 3, 7].

Differences in the personal and situational motivations are generally due to specifics of the competitive settings, with the personal motivation basically referring to the personal interests in the sport discipline variable in a wide range with age and experience [5, 6]; whilst the situational motivations are determined by the individual attitudes to a specific competitive event that are critical for the actual competitive success [5]. The traditional situational motivations research is dominated by analyses of the prestart individual conditions; whilst the modern sports psychology considers an athletic situational motivations as a derivative of the individual motivational setup built up by reflections in the precompetitive conditioning process and competitive success forecasts and expectations [7, 8]. Thus V.F. Sopov argues that it is the motivational setup that is critical for the individual ability to cope with the “comfort threshold” and get fit for the extreme physical and mental stressors and competitive fatigues [8].

Objective of the study was to analyze the individual personal motivations and motivational setups versus the sports tourism skills and experiences.

Methods and structure of the study. We sampled for the purposes of the study the competitors (n=30) to the Russian Indoor Hiking Cup Round 1 events (November 2018, Perm Territory) and split them up into Group 1 (n=13) and Group 2 (n=17) competing on the Difficulty Class 3 and Class 5 tracks, respectively. The sample was surveyed by the following methods: (1) questionnaire survey to rate the individual sports tourism choice motivations, obtain the sports tourism popularity rates and test the practical provisions for the sports tourism progress; (2) adapted version of the standard questionnaire to rate the personal motivation for sports tourism by 31 personal motivation options offered by Dieter Teipel and Reinhild Kemper from Cologne Physical Culture Psychology Institute (Germany) [12]; and (3) V.F. Sopov Motivational Setup Scale [7] to rate the individual motivational setups.

Results and discussion. Survey 1, as mentioned above, was designed to find the leading sports tourism choice motivations, obtain the sports tourism popularity rates and find the practical provisions and material incentives for the sports tourism progress. The sample reported the following sports tourism choice motivations: genuine interest (50%), invitations from friends (44.4%), and the accessible location of the sports tourism facility (44.4%). Athletes generally confessed that sports tourism is less popular than many other sports albeit it grows fast in their regions (Berezovsky region, Perm Territory, Khanty-Mansiysk etc.). The progress is reportedly facilitated by the affordability of the sport, with most of the athletes content with support from their families and the Children and Youth Sport Schools (CYSS); the sample emphasized that the financial incentives are still very limited even in elite sports tourism. It may be concluded, therefore, that the sports tourism choice and progress are virtually irrespective of the external incentives being dictated by the purely internal personality motivations.

Survey 2 yielded the dominant personal motivation for sports tourism versus the skill levels to allow the personal motivation being ranked in both skill groups. The Student t-test showed the intergroup personal motivation differences being significant with 99% confidence (p <0.001). Given in Table 1 hereunder are the key differences in the leading personal motivations of the groups.

Table 1. Personal motivations for sports tourism versus the skill levels

As demonstrated by Table 1, Group 1 is equally motivated for progress to attain personal goals, make success in sports, make friends in the team and expand contacts. Typical Group 1 statements are the following: “Tourism helps me make friends and keep up communication in the athletic community” (17 years old female CMS); “Tourism helps me make physical progress and find new acquaintances and friends” (16 years old male Class I athlete); “I feel that I make progress in trainings and may come to success” (17 years old female Class I athlete); “I appreciate emotions, wins, defeats, experience, skills, friends. My motivation: overcome your fear, overcome yourself! The most important thing is to win the fight against yourself!” (17 years old male Class I athlete).

Croup 2 is more focused on joy, pleasure, interest, self-fulfillment and coping with challenges for personal goals. Typical group statements are: “Many past failures only motivate me for success in the upcoming events” (20 years old male CMS); «My sports tourism experience is joyful and interesting for me” (21 years old male MS); “I compete in sports tourism for I like this interesting, unpredictable and versatile sport” (20 years old female CMS); “My motivation: even when you always win, it is still too little!” (20 years old female MS); “I like people, sport, active lifestyle, diversity and versatility of this sport” (19 years old female CMS); “It is rather a lifestyle than a sport for me; I hope the sports tourism experience will help me make progress and become a teacher” (21 years old female CSM).

Therefore, we have reasons to believe that the sports tourism competitors tend to evolve in their personal motivations with age and skills from testing own resources and talents for competitive successes to pleasure from the progress and achievements and satisfaction with own self-fulfillment and the ability to cope with difficulties on the way. This finding generally agrees with the reported results of a foreign personal motivation study report [15].

Survey 3 was intended to obtain the motivational setup self-rates versus training workloads and success expectations. The survey rated 38%, 30.7% and 31,3% in Group 1 with the optimal (20-22 points), low and excessive motivational setup, respectively. Group 2 was rated 76.9% optimal and 23% excessive on the motivational setup scale. The survey data demonstrate that the more skillful and experienced athletes develop fair motivational setup self-rates and, hence, more successful in the precompetitive conditioning and prestart fever control aspects.

A detailed analysis of the survey data found the following two key differences in the motivational-setup-self rates versus the skill levels. The first difference was found in responses to the question “Are you satisfied with the training process?”; with the satisfaction rates of 53.4% and 76.4% in Groups 1 and 2, and non-satisfaction rates of 46.3% and 0%, respectively. And the second difference was found in responses to the question “Do you hope to make success in this season?”; with 58.8% and 23.5% in Group 2 conservatively and absolutely positive, respectively (no one was negative); whilst Group 1 was 30.8%, 38.4% and 30.8% negative, conservatively positive and absolutely positive, respectively.

Based on the survey data and analysis, we have reasons to conclude that the higher-skilled and experienced athletes are more confident on the way to the competitive goals with reliance on the training progress; and are significantly higher on the precompetitive motivational setup scale – that gives them a foothold for excellent precompetitive mental and physical conditioning.

Conclusion. The sport progress agendas of the sports tourism competitors were found dominated by genuine interest and need for teamwork and communication. With the growing sports tourism skills and experience the athletes’ personal motivations were tested to evolve towards the self-fulfillment agenda at sacrifice of the communication related motivations, with a special priority to the sport-specific difficulties facing and coping aspects. The motivational setup self-rating abilities of the athletes were found to grow with the skill level with reliance on progress in the training process, confidence in the training system and well-grounded success expectations.

References

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Corresponding author: liudmila.rogaleva@yandex.ru

Abstract

Objective of the study was to analyze the individual personal motivations and motivational setups versus the sports tourism skills and experiences.
Methods and structure of the study. Sampled for the study were 30 competitors to the Russian Indoor Hiking Cup Round 1 events (November 2018, Perm Territory) and split them up into Group 1 (n=13) and Group 2 (n=17) competing on the Difficulty Class 3 and Class 5 tracks, respectively. The sample was surveyed by the following methods: (1) questionnaire survey to rate the individual sports tourism choice motivations, obtain the sports tourism popularity rates and test the practical provisions for the sports tourism progress; (2) adapted version of the standard questionnaire to rate the personal motivation for sports tourism by 31 personal motivation options offered by Dieter Teipel and Reinhild Kemper from Cologne Physical Culture Psychology Institute (Germany); and (3) V.F. Sopov Motivational Setup Scale to rate the individual motivational setups.
Study results and conclusions. The sport progress agendas of the sports tourism competitors were found dominated by genuine interest and need for teamwork and communication. With the growing sports tourism skills and experience the athletes’ personal motivations were tested to evolve towards the self-fulfillment agenda at sacrifice of the communication related motivations, with a special priority to the sport-specific difficulties facing and coping aspects. The motivational setup self-rating abilities of the athletes were found to grow with the skill level with reliance on progress in the training process, confidence in the training system and well-grounded success expectations