Motives of Outdoor Recreational Activities

Abstract

Outdoor recreation involves voluntary participation in free-time activity, occurs in outdoors and embraces the interaction of people with the natural environment. A few researches have indicated that taking part in outdoor recreational activities can enhance a person’s quality of life in psychological well-being. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of psychological well-being obtained by athletes by taking part in outdoor recreational activities. Besides that, the present study also will identify types of outdoor recreational activities participated by the athletes. Psychological Well-being of Outdoor Questionnaire (PWOQ), which contains 20 items, was used to collect the data. Five psychological well-being factors were derived from the questionnaire. They are personal satisfaction and enjoyment, socialization, positive attitude, aesthetics and sensation seeking. 98 athletes from Universiti Teknologi MARA were randomly chosen to take part in this study. Overall, the athletes are pursuing their degree courses and aged between 19 and 22 years. Based on gender, the male (N = 53) and female (N = 45) respondents took part voluntarily in this study. The highest psychological well-being obtained by the participants in outdoor activities was socialization (M = 3.73), followed by personal satisfaction and enjoyment (M = 3.65), positive attitude (M = 3.38), aesthetics (M = 3.17) and sensation seeking (M = 3.10). Male respondents were higher than the female respondents in personal satisfaction and enjoyment (t = 2.51, p 0.05) and positive attitude (t = 1.33, p > 0.05). The results revealed that the outdoor activity designers should emphasize on the outdoor activities for socialization environment.