Are they all daredevils? Introducing a participation typology for the consumption of lifestyle sports in different settings

Abstract

In this article, the relationships between lifestyle sport participants and the natural or artificial settings in which they are active are conceptualised. This exploratory examination of lifestyle sport participants, based on data collected through an online survey and in-depth interviews with lifestyle sport participants in The Netherlands, revealed three participation types: Exercisers, Experiencers and Exceeders. An examination of these groups’ motivations and preferences revealed that the consumption of lifestyle sports is more heterogeneous than often presumed. The results support the theory that commercialisation and popularisation processes in lifestyle sports may have blurred the boundary between these sports and traditional sports. The current article provides a starting point for a better understanding of the various consumption patterns of lifestyle sport participants. The findings of this study offer new insights that may be of use to managers involved in lifestyle sports participation. They may consider lifestyle sport participants as a number of smaller homogeneous markets with similar needs and motivations.

Keywords:

• lifestyle sports
• consumer behaviour
• commercialisation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editor of ESMQ and the reviewers for their detailed and constructive comments on previous versions of this manuscript. The authors would also like to thank Remco Hoekman from the W.J.H. Mulier Institute Centre for Research on Sports in Society for his assistance with the digital survey.

Notes

1. The motivational factor fun/enjoyment is the highest scoring item for all participant types. However, this construct may encompass different aspects for different participant types. As Loy and Coakley (2006) observed, there are several theoretical concepts which relate to fun, including ‘sociability’, ‘euphoric interaction’, ‘the quest for excitement’ and ‘emotional dialectics’.