EXPLORING THE MOTIVATIONS FOR PARTICIPANT ENGAGEMENT IN THE AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY GAMES

Sports tourism has become a primary catalyst for tourism activity with a range of researchers noting the growing recognition of the inherent relationship between sport and tourism over the last decade or so. Sports events are unique to other types of events in that they attract a particularly wide range of participants with each seeking to satisfy their motivations for engagement in slightly different ways. Importantly, sport tourism is a significant and growing global industry with notable economic implications for the specific sport and/or the event as well as there being a variety of flow-on tourism and travel benefits derived by the host destination by its staging. Despite this fact, sport tourism remains however largely an area of economic and social endeavour that has not been well researched. For example, even though previous research has suggested that the university student market constitutes a significant component of the international travel and tourism industry, there has to date been little research undertaken related specifically to this population with respect to their engagement in sporting events. The primary aim of this exploratory study therefore was to identify the underlying motivations for participants engaging in the Australian University Games. This study was based on a positivistic or quantitative approach to exploring a topic and involved a purposive sampling technique. Primary data was collected by way of a self-administered questionnaire with the study sample comprising students registered as participants at the 2005 Australian University Games. The data collection process took place over a two day period in October, 2005 and entailed completion of a self-administered survey. In all, over the scheduled two day period of registration, approximatel