Public Leisure Services Research Articles

“I Am Not Diversity Training”: Exploring the Experiences of Diverse Parks and Recreation Professionals Through Socio-Ecological Systems Theory

As a public leisure service, parks and recreation is philosophically oriented and legally obligated to be accessible. However, a misalignment between who works for agencies and the communities they serve can perpetuate existing power dynamics where decision-makers reflect the mainstream population. In some cases, this dynamic may slow the rate at which agencies become more inclusive and equitable. This study used a socio-ecological framework to qualitatively investigate the experiences of diverse parks and recreation professionals (N = 20) with the aim of identifying supports and challenges they have experienced. The findings were largely consistent with workforce diversity literature but also offered unique considerations. For instance, as a public service, diverse employees manage biases from coworkers but also from the community members they serve. Additionally, the recreation workforce is often recruited from former participants, emphasizing the importance of promoting leadership that can advance policies and practices focused on equity and inclusion.

‘I can’t say we focus on the mom’: perceptions of public leisure service providers towards pregnant and postpartum leisure

ABSTRACT While public leisure services are meant to be inclusive and accessible, few researchers have unpacked what public leisure service providers (PLSPs) perceive as socially inclusive leisure services for pregnant or postpartum women. Therefore, we used this study to explore how PLSPs in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, perceived the needs of pregnant and postpartum women when creating public leisure programs and services. We interviewed 14 PLSPs to gather an in-depth understanding of their perceptions. Our findings demonstrated how PLSPs approached community programming for pregnant and postpartum women by prioritizing specific life stages for programming, attempting inclusion through leisure facilities, and listening to select stakeholders and citizens for program feedback. PLSPs perceptions of pregnant and postpartum women led to generalizations about their needs, a lack of inclusive facilities, and impressions influenced by assumptions, instincts, and preconceived notions about citizens absent from public programs.

여가동기, 여가관여도 그리고 사회계층 관계 연구

The purpose of this study was to provide insights into how social class influences the motivationenduring involvement relationship. The data collected from a public leisure service provider were analyzed by examining the measurement model, the structural model, and invariance testing. The results demonstrated that all three dimensions of enduring involvement were significantly predicted by at least one of motivational dimensions. Attraction was positively predicted by Autonomy, Activity, Nature, and Health. Centrality was positively predicted by Autonomy and Social. Self Expression was positively predicted by Autonomy, Social, Nature, and Health and negatively associated with Learning. The results also showed that these dimension-to-dimension relations were moderated by social class. In particular, for respondents in higher social class, the opportunities to be healthy, to be close to nature and to test their endurance and boundaries were the important activity features that led the self expression and induced positive emotions associated with the activity. On the other hand, for those in lower class, the opportunities for solitude and self-reflection appeared to be more attractive activity features that fueled self-expression processes. In addition, the lower social class with the needs of sharing experience with family and close friends during their leisure were more prone than their counterparts to make lifestyle decisions that bond them to leisure activities.

Women’s leading role in the political struggle for leisure: an ethnographic study in Porto Alegre, Brazil

ABSTRACT Porto Alegre became a pioneer city in public leisure services in 1926. Since then, leisure has gained weight as a matter of ‘social interest’ and ‘public interest’, which materialised in the interventionist stance of the City, when it created the Municipal Department of Sports, Recreation and Leisure (MDS) in 1993. However, the administration that took office in 2017 suppressed that ‘public interest’ character and eventually closed the Department. The political-administrative procedure lasted seven months, and a collective protest emerged from it/in it to defend the Department, led by women from different neighbourhoods who enjoyed leisure activities. Mostly elderly, they started to fight for their right to leisure. This study, based on pragmatic sociology, looked into these women’s struggle to maintain that Department. We conducted ethnographic research in which we participated in their collective action, especially in identifying and taking advantage of political opportunities to guarantee leisure as a social right. Ten interviews were conducted with female leaders of that action, showing that the leisure activities offered by the Department were important for the lives of these women and their ageing processes, and that their political role in defending the Department exposed inequalities in access to leisure.

“Me” vs. “We”: Value-Oriented Fee Increase Justification Messaging in the Context of Resource-Intensive Public Recreation Facilities

Tax-based appropriations for local public leisure services have become increasingly scarce. To increase cost recovery and generate additional revenue, many park and recreation agencies have added new fees or elevated existing fees. However, fee increases may arouse resistance among users. To alleviate user resistance, fee justification messaging providing additional information about potential beneficial outcomes may be utilized. This study sought to test two different types of benefit-based fee justification messages (community-benefit vs. user-benefit messages) in the context of an aquatic center and examine how the effects of messages vary with individual value orientations. Results indicate that both types of benefit-based justification messaging improved users’ fairness perceptions, but had a marginal impact on purchase intentions. The effectiveness of messaging was found to be dependent on value orientation as individuals with a high self-enhancement or a high self-transcendent value orientation were more responsive to fee messaging.

Formational acessibilty: the profissional perception in the inclusion of people with intellectual disability

This article objectify expatiate the conception of accessibility for practices in the time / space of leisure of the person with intellectual disability in the city of Curitiba, Paraná. This research was based in a qualitative method and data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 06 managers of the City Hall of Curitiba, analysis of dissemination materials and information available on the City Hall website between the years of 2013 to 2016. This analysis points to many barriers faced by people with intellectual disability in accessing their rights and public leisure services at City Hall. It is evident that, in order to overcome the “formational” barrier, it is necessary to have continued professional qualification and scientific knowledge about people with intellectual disability in addition to a sensitive human outlook about them, so that laws and practices of public policies services for people with intellectual disability are effectivel y implemented.

Racial and Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion Efforts of Public Park and Recreation Agencies

People of color are less likely to use public parks and recreation programs compared to Whites. Communities of color tend to have less park areas, fewer recreation opportunities, or inferior quality of parks and recreation facilities. These disparities in public leisure service delivery run counter to the foundational philosophy of the field, which is an equal and fair distribution of social and health benefits to all citizens. How should public park and recreation agencies address these issues and make their services more equitable? To date, a relatively small number of studies have investigated what public recreation agencies are currently doing or can do to promote racial and ethnic diversity and inclusion within the organizations and user groups. The purpose of this study is to add to the existing literature on the marketing of public leisure service delivery in two ways. First, the study uses a qualitative research method to explore organizational efforts of public parks and recreation agencies focusing on racial and ethnic inclusion. Second, the collected information is analyzed using a usage market segmentation approach, the escalator concept, to better understand if the organizational efforts meet varying usage levels. A purposive sampling strategy recruited employees from eight agencies located in a large city or urban area with more racial and ethnic diversity than the U.S. national average. Those employees were directors, managers, or staff members primarily responsible for issues related to racial and ethnic inclusion. Semi-structured phone interviews were conducted during September and October of 2016. The participants were asked about their work responsibilities, as well as diversity and inclusion efforts of the agency. The collected data were analyzed with the five basic steps of qualitative data analysis method. The study identified 38 organizational efforts for promoting racial and ethnic diversity and inclusion within the agencies and user groups. Those 38 organizational efforts were categorized into six major themes: (1) Specific programs for people of color, (2) Communication, (3) Financial aid, (4) Youth programs, (5) Internal administrative efforts, and (6) Research. The identified six themes were further distinguished based on the usage levels. The findings show that a majority of the programs and efforts specific to people of color are focused on non-users and light users. Other efforts focused on retention for medium to heavy users. These findings suggested that the agencies might need to focus more on moving the existing user groups to higher usage levels so they would become repeat users. Thus, it is important that public park and recreation agencies segment their markets to increase program sustainability and make a long-term commitment to the existing programs or new strategic plans for promoting racial and ethnic inclusion. In any case, marketing and communication at all user levels to people of color is essential. Subscribe to JPRA

Outsourcing transitions and the employment relationship implications

AbstractDrawing on three longitudinal case studies involving the outsourcing of public leisure services, we explore the work transitions of staff as they transfer from one organisation to another using a three‐phase analytical framework. The findings confirm the idea that outsourcing can be a difficult transition to go through, with losses occurring in relation to terms and conditions of employment. However, they also show how such changes can occur alongside the development of seemingly positive employment relationships with the new employer that challenge the view that the employment effects of public service outsourcing are invariably perceived in a negative light by employees. In doing so, the study's findings are seen to point towards the value of exploring outsourcing‐related work transitions longitudinally and through the lens of the adopted analytical framework. They are also seen to have implications for how such transitions are theorised and managed, including how we might understand the nature of the employment relationship and the role of line managers.

Experiments Testing the Effectiveness of Purposeful Anchoring on Reference Price in the Context of Public Leisure Services

Many leisure managers are under political pressure to raise more revenues from fees without arousing protests from users. Purposeful anchoring is a potential strategy for accomplishing this goal. Three experiments using student subjects in a laboratory context were designed to investigate four research questions that explored the anchoring effect on price of decoys, contextual relevant numbers and noncontextual numbers, and the range of reference prices. Results were mixed. Some treatments in experiments 1 and 2 indicated a decoy and a contextual relevant numeric effect, while others did not. Results from experiment 3 were unequivocal in showing no anchoring effect when noncontextual numbers were used. Contrary to expectations, among subjects reporting different levels of participation, no consistent differences in responses to the treatment anchors emerged and, unexpectedly, variation in the range of reference prices tended to be greater among these reporting frequent, rather than infrequent, participation.

Who ought to receive what? An instrument to assess a community's preferred strategy for allocating leisure service resources

All are likely to agree that resources for public leisure services should be allocated equitably, that is, fairly. Equity is a pseudo-cognate term in that many who use it assume that everyone has the same intuitive definition of it. This is a fallacious assumption. There are multiple and diverse interpretations of what is meant by equity. Since interpretations reflect value systems, they are likely to vary across communities. This article develops an instrument that will enable professionals to identify the preferred interpretation in their community. It proposes a taxonomy of five broad equity perspectives with nine operationalisations of the construct. A classic scale development procedure was used to measure the nine operational strategies. The empirical procedures failed to develop measures for two of the operationalisations but they verified the reliability, dimensionality and validity of 23 items measuring the remaining seven equity operationalisations: Economically Disadvantaged, Equality, Taxes Paid, Direct Price, Efficiency, Advocacy and Professional Judgement.

Absorptive capacity and market orientation in public service provision

The application of market orientation to public organisations does not adequately account for the unique features of this context. Drawing on absorptive capacity literature, this is the first study to examine the role of the organisation's learning environment on the market orientation–performance interface for two opposing public management contexts. The research involved a national survey questionnaire to 1060 internal and external public leisure service providers in England. Empirical testing through structural equation modelling revealed that not all dimensions of market orientation are universally positive and marketing scholars should seek to examine and understand market orientation in the context of the organisation and its learning mechanisms, as absorptive capacity has clear and different moderation effects under different management contexts.

A level playing field: social inclusion in public leisure

PurposeThe transfer to partnership in public sector management has created significantly new modes of service delivery, and is suggested to be the best means of ensuring that disadvantaged groups are socially included. The purpose of this paper is to examine New Leisure Trust (NLT) structures in public leisure provision relative to direct, in‐house managed facilities and privately run Leisure Management Contractor (LMC) facilities. In particular, NLTs receive significant government funds and subsidies through tax breaks that are not forthcoming to rivals, which raises questions as to whether NLTs deserve such aid for delivering upon the social inclusion agenda of the government.Design/methodology/approachThe research involved a national survey questionnaire to 1,060 public leisure service providers in England. Empirical testing through multiple analysis of variance and regression analysis was applied to the dataset.FindingsThe authors find that NLTs do not follow social orientation strategies to any significantly greater degree than rivals, nor seem to create social inclusion to any greater degree. Further, NLTs have the least to gain in terms of business performance from creating social inclusion, whilst in‐house (in particular) and LMC facilities stand to gain the most.Practical implicationsThough each approach to provision examined places a considerable strategic emphasis on being socially oriented, they are not effective at increasing the social inclusion of recreationally disadvantaged groups.Originality/valueThis paper calls for the current public leisure management playing field to be levelled in a rebalance of opportunity and investment through the removal of anti‐competitive measures.

Determining improvement priorities of public leisure facilities by revised Importance Performance Analysis

The aim of this research is to use a revised Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA) approach that comprises three-factor theory concept and partial correlation analysis for classifying public leisure services into factors so that managers can make better decisions about how resources should be allocated to improve service quality. On the basis of the customer survey of 90,746 respondents collected from 254 public leisure centres in England during the period of 2006–2008, the research findings demonstrate that the performance of English public leisure facilities in technical quality (facility and service quality) is generally worse than functional quality (accessibility and staff). Specifically, adequate resources have to be allocated to improve the service in water temperature and number of people in swimming pool, not only because they are the major weaknesses but also because customers regard them as prerequisites. To sum up, managers need to know which factor service attributes fall so as to set right priorities while managing customer satisfaction.

Identifying the factor structure of customer satisfaction with public leisure services

The aim of this research is to classify public leisure services into factors so that managers can make better decisions about how resources should be allocated to improve customer satisfaction and service quality. Based on customer survey of 90,746 respondents collected from 254 public leisure centres in England during the period of 2006-2008, the research findings demonstrate that the performance of English public leisure facilities in technical quality (cleanliness, wet facility, dry facility and catering) is generally worse than functional quality (activity and staff). Specifically, adequate resources have to be allocated to improve the service in cleanliness and wet facility, not only because they are the major weaknesses, but also because customers regard them as prerequisites. To sum up, managers need to know which factor service dimensions fall so as to set right priorities while managing customer satisfaction.

A More Tenable Marketing for Leisure Services and Studies

The integration of marketing principles and practices into leisure services and studies over the past 25 years has been met with significant confusion and skepticism. Recent theoretical re-conceptualizations of public leisure services marketing suggest that a new marketing philosophy is needed to guide marketing efforts in this context. This paper argues that social marketing, previously largely ignored in the leisure literature, offers a perspective more consistent with the mandate of public leisure services. An explicit goal of the essay is to clarify confusion surrounding marketing and to describe a more tenable philosophy so that a wider range of subdisciplines in leisure services and studies might take advantage of some or all of the beneficial aspects of marketing.

Citizen attitudes toward advertising by public leisure service agencies

This study examines citizens’ attitudes toward advertising in general as well as toward public leisure service agencies. Data drawn from a five‐community survey of 497 Ontario households indicate that respondents hold mixed attitudes toward advertising in general and somewhat more positive attitudes toward advertising by public leisure service agencies. Respondents positively view public leisure service agencies’ use of advertising for information purposes, but have mixed attitudes toward the economic effects of advertising by those agencies. Using a K‐means cluster analysis, three citizen groups were identified on the basis of their involvement with public leisure services. Individuals involved at a high or functional level with public leisure services are more likely to hold positive attitudes toward advertising by these agencies as compared to those individuals who are not involved with public leisure service agencies (p < .05). The data suggest that citizens may be accepting of public leisure service agencies using a broader spectrum of promotional techniques.

Commitment to Public Leisure Service Providers: A Conceptual and Psychometric Analysis

In this investigation, we proposed and tested a scale designed to measure recreationists' commitment to public leisure Service providers. We suggested that the identity of public leisure Service providers is embedded in the facilities and settings they manage. Consequently, we feel that it is important to consider recreationists' commitment to public leisure Service providers by examining the meanings they associate with the settings and facilities managed by the agency in addition to their trust in the agency's ability to manage these settings in a manner consistent with these meanings. To operationalize this conceptualization, we drew upon the place bonding literature to construct a measure of agency commitment that consisted of five dimensions; affective attachment, place dependence, place identity, social bonding, and value congruence. Data were collected from two public leisure Service contexts: the Chattahoochee National Forest and Cleveland Metroparks. Our analyses offered strongest support for a correlated factor model consisting of the five proposed dimensions. In addition to offering a valid and reliable measure of public agency commitment, this paper also provides an example of the utility of structural equation modeling for the systematic testing of attitudinal scales.

The Use of Urban Parks

Urban parks are a significant feature of the urban environment and constitute a significant budget commitment on the part of local councils and some state governments, but they are relatively neglected, and often ignored, in mainstream leisure studies. This paper examines two themes in existing urban parks research, namely the ‘non-use and decline’ theme and the theme of equity. The review concludes that the ‘accepted wisdom’ on non-use and decline of urban parks is questionable and contrary to available empirical evidence and that leisure studies discourses which ignore urban parks as a leisure sector give a distorted view of the equity outcomes of public leisure services as measured by patterns of usage. The paper presents data from recent surveys of park use in Sydney, Australia, which indicate that visiting urban parks is the most popular of all out-of-home leisure activities and, unlike a number of other public leisure services, urban parks attract high levels of use from virtually all sections of the community.

Using Leisure Services to Build Social Capital in Later Life: Classical Traditions, Contemporary Realities, and Emerging Possibilities

The purpose of this paper was to explore the social capital generating potential of public leisure services for retirees as well as those approaching retirement age. The meanings of leisure, community, and friendship in the writings of Aristotle are explored as a philosophical base for reconsidering the relationship between leisure and social capital, and also for establishing a point of embarkation for the expansion of community leisure services beyond their currently limited focus. A description of the emerging profile of retirees, especially those preparing for retirement, is presented, as well as how they may seek and engage leisure activity consistent with the Aristotelian conceptualization of community. We offer a series of re-orientations for leisure service practitioners that may accommodate aging citizens and nurture their activities in informal ways that strengthen citizenship and democracy.

An Examination of the Leisure Involvement—Agency Commitment Relationship

Building from the existing literature, we tested a model suggesting that leisure involvement is an antecedent of commitment to a public leisure service provider (N = 860). Leisure involvement was conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of attraction, centrality, and self-expression. Agency commitment was also conceptualized as multidimensional construct consisting of five components; place identity, place dependence, affective attachment, value congruence, and social bonding. The analyses offered partial support for our hypothesized model. Place dependence and affective attachment were positively influenced by attraction, whereas place identity and value congruence were positively influenced by self-expression. Finally, social bonding was positively influenced by self-expression and centrality, but negatively influenced by attraction. This work adds to a growing body of empirical work suggesting that individuals progress though a developmental process where involvement with a leisure activity leads to the development of specific service preferences.