An Analysis of the Temporal Allotment of Sports Participation in Taiwan

[[abstract]]Sport is one of the most popular leisure activities of all time. The purposes of this study were to 1) deduce the basic modes of the average Taiwanese person's sports participation; 2) probe into their schemas of temporal allotment, and 3) analyse the influential factors in their decision-making. It is hoped that this study can provide an internal variability model for observing the overall sports participation in Taiwan. The questionnaire subject pool included 5,102 Taiwanese retrieved from “The Survey of Social Development Trends (Time Use), Taiwan Area, ROC”, on five variables (age, education, occupation, holiday situation and personal income) and two intervening variables (pleasantness perception and time perception) from “The Cognition and Perception of Time” Scale. Descriptive statistics, categorical multiple regression analysis and path analysis were used to construct the sports participation internal model. The results are as follows: 1) the older the participants were in age, the more persistent their sports participation would appear to be. However, the higher their educational backgrounds were, the less enthusiastic they seemed to be about participating in sports. Workers and students had less sports participation, but the retired, the stay-at-home and the unemployed demonstrated real ardour for sports. Except for the group of unemployed as their holiday status and a personal income of less than 6,668 USD per year, the other factors had no significant influence on sports participation; 2) multiple regression with categorical variables: sport participation =.270 × age + .149 × occupation + .071 × holiday + .064 × education + .062 × time + .036 × income -.052 × pleasant; and 3) path analysis indicated that the model of sports participation was acceptable (χ²=463.45(p=.00), RMSEA=.134, GFI=.978, AGFI=.840, CFI=.973, NFI=.973, NNFI=.849, CN=159.411)