2023 Volume 19 Issue 2 Pages 35-44
With the shift of athletic club activities to communities, there is an immediate need to secure human resources who are continuously involved in "supporting sports" on a daily and community scale. Prior research with university students has hypothesized an association between the enjoyment of "supporting sports" activities and continuously behavior, but relationship has not been verified due to lack of behavioral indicators. On contrast, research on the sport commitment model suggests that enjoyment of the activity forms sport commitment and is associated with sport behavior, and that obligatory continuers who are not enjoying themselves will drop out. Using the Sport Commitment theory, we believe this research will help to gain useful insights when considering management strategies for university students.
The purpose of this study was to compare enjoyment and commitment of continuers and dropouts, and to clarify the relationship between continuity factors and continuous participation behavior. First, we verified the applicability of the Japanese version of the SCQ-2, which measures activities that "supporting sports". Next, we compared the continuity factors between the continuers and dropouts. The results of the comparison of continuation factors by continuation status showed that the Enthusiastic Commitment scores were significantly higher in the continuation group. Finally, we analyzed the relationship between continuance factors and continuous participation behavior indicators for the continuation and dropout groups. The results showed a relationship between Enthusiastic Commitment and activity frequency in the continuation and dropout group. In addition, a correlation was found between enjoyment and activity frequency in the dropout group. However, no relationship between continuity factors and duration was found.
