Exploring the Motivations of BASE Jumpers: Extreme Sport Enthusiasts

Little previous research has been conducted exploring the motivational factors that influence a person’s desire to participate in extreme sports. The researchers used a means-end approach (e.g. semi-structured interviews) to explore motivations for participation in the extreme sport of BASE jumping. BASE jumping is the activity of parachuting from bridges, buildings, antennas, and cliffs, in which participants have been identified as voluntary-risk takers. The results indicated that BASE jumpers deliberately took risks as a means of becoming positively transformed, which was essential to their quality of life. The study findings hold important implications for researchers interested in further studies of extreme subcultures as well as practitioners interested in developing adventure tourism opportunities targeted toward extreme subcultures. Background The motivational factors that influence a person’s desire to participate in extreme sports have not yet been identified. Lyng (1990) acknowledged that we do not fully understand what motivates individuals to partake in high-risk behavior. Lupton & Tulloch (2002) have echoed this concern by recognizing that little empirical research has strived to examine the meanings attributed to high-risk behavior. Previous research has focused on some high-risk subcultures, but not on extreme sport subcu