Identifying Motivational Factors Affecting Adventure Sports with Reference to the “Kithulgala Adventure Base Camp, White Water Rafting

Abstract

This study focuses to identify the motivational factors which can effect on white water rafting as an adventure sports. The literature review facilitated to find fifteen motivational factors which effect on the participation of outdoor recreation and adventure tourism such as relaxation, being able to view special and different places, being able to discover new cultures and swim, being able to feel rush, having passion for adventure and feeling of fear or enjoyment of risk. These factors were further developed based on field notification by a pilot study. A sample of 300 customers randomly selected from the Kitulgala adventure place and they have distributed a questionnaire to collect data. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) method was used as an analytical method to extract the motivation factors of white water rafting as an adventure sport in Sri Lanka. The result facilitated to confirm seven motivational factors of white water rafting as latent factors which refer to the Sri Lanka context. They were thrill, nature, place identity, place dependence, revisit intention, perceived risk and word-of-mouth. The cumulative variance explained by the factors derived was 81.25%. Each factors are reliable (α=0.71 & KMO = 0.734) to use for further study in this particular as an empirical survey tool