Leisure Constraints On Outdoor Recreation Participation Among Chinese Students

Outdoor recreational sports have positive characteristics of returning to nature, keeping fit, and relaxing body and mind, which not only satisfy people’s interests and needs, but also benefit their physical and mental health. Therefore, more and more college students are willing to spend energy, time and money participating in their favorite recreational sports. However, various constraint factors limit participating behaviors of college students. The purpose of the study is to probe the relationship between subjective and objective constraint factors to participation of college students in outdoor recreational sports and their behavior performance. A total of 676 subjects of this study are from universities in Zhuhai. A combined method of the qualitative and quantitative research was employed to investigate their constraints issues of participation from four-dimensions: intrapersonal constraint, lack of supports from others, structural constraint and participation-experience constraint. The results of the study indicate that: (1) Most of college students (males 87.18% and females 64.76%) have participating experiences of outdoor recreational events; male students have higher levels of participation than females in frequency and the amount of numbers. Many students (males 75.82% and females 55.83%) choose land areas as their preferred sporting venues, much higher than waters and high altitude activity for their leisure space selection. (2) Constraints on outdoor recreational sports participation impacted on both no-experienced and experienced students. A-) Both groups have perceived constraints on the level of participation. A significant difference exists for both intrapersonal constraints and structural constraint in degree of involvement; no-experienced students are strongly influenced by the structural constraint factors and followed by intrapersonal constraint. The structural constraint also affects experienced students’ participation. There is some confusion of experience, with the increase of students’ involvement; the perceived constraints are gradually weaker. B-) Female students have higher levels of perceived constraints than males, especially in intrapersonal constraint, structural constraint and the participation-experience constraint. C-) There is significant difference between senior students and freshmen & sophomore students in intrapersonal constraint, other dimensions do not have any difference; D-) Students who major in literature & history and science & engineering are much higher than the major of physical education in all perceived constraint factors. E-) The perceived leisure constraints for setting of the activity from strong-to-weak are land, waters and high altitude activity in degree of participation. (3) A negative correlation relationship exists between college students’ behavior in outdoor leisure sports participation and the four dimension constraints factors. The more the individual perceived constraint, the weaker the likelihood of students’ involvements; there is a significant mutual predictive effect between intrapersonal constraint and participating behavior. In addition, there is a significant negative correlation relationship between intrapersonal constraints, lack of supports from others, structural constraint with participating frequency. The more the individual perceived constraint factors, the lower the likelihood of students involving numbers, among self-limitation and structural constraint as predictable index in participating number has a statistical significance. In conclusion, if only students could realize how to overcome individual constraints to participation, they would enjoy more outdoor recreational sports