Similarities and differences in constraints and constraint negotiation among Japanese sport tourists: a case of masters games participants^*

* This article is based on an abstract presented at the 25th Asia Pacific Tourism Association Conference (APTA 2019).

ABSTRACT

The purposes of this study were to examine (a) similarities and differences in constraints to and constraint negotiation for masters games (MG) participation, and (b) the relationships among constraints, constraint negotiation, and intention to participate in the World Masters Games 2021 Kansai, across international sport tourists, domestic sport tourists, and sport excursionists. An online survey was conducted with 449 Japanese people who participated in MGs within the last three years. Our results indicated that international sport tourists experienced higher levels of psychological, physiological, interpersonal, financial, tourism, commitment, MG-specific constraints than domestic sport tourists and sport excursionists, although physiological constraints did not differ between international and domestic sport tourists. Conversely, international and domestic sport tourists utilized tourism and MG-self-adaptation negotiation strategies more than sport excursionists. Lastly, constraints to and constraint negotiation for the past MG were not related to the intention of participation in the World Masters Games 2021 Kansai across the three groups. These results suggest that this typology of sport tourists – international, domestic, and excursionist – is an effective framework to understand constraints and negotiation as well as other behaviors and experiences of Japanese sport tourists.

KEYWORDS:

• Constraints
• constraint negotiation
• Japan
• masters sports
• sport tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Eiji Ito http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4663-0783

Notes

* This article is based on an abstract presented at the 25th Asia Pacific Tourism Association Conference (APTA 2019).

1 We conducted ANOVA on household income by treating the categorical variable as a continuous variable (1 = under 1,999,999 yen, 9 = over 20,000,000 yen) and a non-significant result was obtained, F(2, 388) = 1.89, p > .05.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this study was provided by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI [grant number 16K21172] (Japan).