Athletics adherence determinants: a comparative study between Brazil, Portugal and Spain

Abstract

Introduction: sports adherence can occur due to several reasons. In this sense, it seems fundamental that sports practice be in accordance with the needs and desires by practitioners, so that the modality offer corresponds to their expectations. The consumer understanding together the service analysis and athletics practice with a focus on the target audience can help to identify promote determinants and greater practitioners adherence. Objectives: analyzing the determinants factors for athletics choice among the education responsible for children between 5 and 10 years old in Brazil, Spain and Portugal. Comparing the answered by the education responsible for each country, and identifing the determinants that contribute to athletics adherence. Methods: it is a qualitative-quantitative study with two different samples: the first one, composed by athletics clubs in Brazil, Spain and Portugal, being used field research techniques in classes observation, clubs functioning and structure observations; the second one, composed by fifity-two education responsible, who answered a questionnaire. Data analysis was performed through content and observations analysis, in addition to descriptive statistics, performed through the SPSS software (version 25.0 for windows) to analyze quantitative data from the questionnaires. Results: were found significant differences between determinants factors to athletics adherence in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. The most important determinants athletics adherence are related with family's acceptance of the child's sports practice, while the determinants factors that least interfere with athletics adherence are related to athlete's training, that is, related to become athletes potentiality. Conclusions: our results indicate that the main orientation in clubs observed is the athletes training, with a focus on children's performance. However, the goals by education responsible are mostly connected with “Personal Factors” dimension. These findings indicate a discrepancy between the athletics training offer by clubs and the purpose for athletics practice by education responsible, which can lead to low athletics practice adherence. These results also collaborate with the identification sports business models determinants that involve the athletics practice, with the aims to increasing modality adhesion, in addition to demonstrating a importance in constant clubs adaptation to market demands. Keywords: Sport management, sport participation, practice reasons, education responsible perception.