ACTIVITY PREFERENCES AND PARTICIPATION - CONCLUSIONS FROM A FACTOR ANALYTIC STUDY

With the advent of modern data processing technology, it became feasible to use various clustering algorithms to uncover latent common properties among recreation activities. This paper compares stated recreation activity preferences with actual participation as a means of solidifying previous work on latent common properties. The first stage of the research compared preference for a specific activity with participation in that same activity. The analysis showed that preference-participation consistency or r2 = 0.37 is limited to a small number of activities. The second stage, designed to compare the structure of preferences with the structure of participation as revealed through factor analysis, indicated that of the four nonspurious groups of activities found in both preferred activities and activities participated in, two pairs were notably similar. Using the preference-participation relationship as a measure of the relationship between perception and behavior, one can say that activity groupings based on perceptions are positively associated with activity groupings based on behavior. The findings thus support the contention that selected conclusions based on perceptual data apply to the planning and programming of leisure experiences. -Authors