Abstract
As the phenomenon is called ＂Running boom＂, the number of people who enjoy running
activities has been increasing dramatically. Most runners participating in city marathon
recognize such running activities as leisure activities. In leisure studies, there is tons of research
on motivations to participate in leisure activities. However, recent studies demonstrated the
importance to investigate not only ＂motivations＂ but also ＂constraints＂ when we consider
participations in any leisure activities. The purpose of this study was to examine the theoretical
construct of structural constraints that runners face to participate in a city marathon and
verify a number of hypotheses. Data was collected by an internet survey conducted for runners
participated in a city marathon, and total of 1124 completed samples were used for analysis in this
study. As a result of the internet research, it was confirmed that there exist several structural
constraints, cost, schedule, location and event contents as runners consider participation in a
city marathon, and resulted in different perceptions of the structural constraints among personal
attributions. For example, participants who might be highly motivated think event contents more
important than cost when they consider participating in a sports activity as leisure activities. The
results of this study contain several managing implications which contribute to improve leisure
event evaluations.
