Extreme sport participation as serious leisure : athletes' overall satisfaction with the event extreme sports week

This study is concentrating on the extreme sport athletes who have participated in the spectacular event Extreme Sport Week (Mykletun, 2009; Ekstremsportveko, 2012) in Voss, Norway 2011. In particular, it addresses the extreme sport athletes’ involvement with the sport, their career development, and their experiences during the event. The aim is to investigate extreme sport athletes satisfaction with the event based on Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) experience four-realm model and Getz’s and Andersson (2010) event-specific career study as well as Getz and McConnel (2011) sport tourism event travel career study. As follows, to examine the total enjoyment of the event and if sports travel career development affects athletes’ experiences and satisfaction. This study applies a descriptive and explorative research design along with quantitative research method. The sample, which was self-selected from 1106 extreme sport event participants, consisted of 292 respondents who represented participants from Norway, USA, Australia, UK, Netherlands and many more countries. The main factors observed were that: most of the extreme sport athletes are amateurs and have developed serious leisure careers; majority of athletes had positive experiences during the event, especially about the esthetic experience element; the predicted elements that influenced the satisfaction were the total enjoyment, experiences and serious leisure careers; there were small variance in satisfaction between more involved athletes than less involved; the athletes generally were satisfied with the event. In addition, the majority of participants were positive about attending the Extreme Sport Week in Voss in the future. The author also explores how these findings are related to sport tourism