A Study of Personality, Risk-taking Attitude, and Adventure Behavior in Adventure-based Recreationists

• Main Authors: Chang-Hao Tseng, 曾常豪
• Other Authors: Tsung Hung Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/61934185324590920342

博士 === 國立雲林科技大學 === 會計系 === 103 === Scientific understanding of the relationships among the personality, risk-taking attitude, and behavior of adventure-based recreationists is limited. This study examined how personality and risk attitude affect the behavior of adventure tourists in Taiwan as they undergo white water rafting and scuba diving activities. A total of 843 usable questionnaires were collected, and SPSS 17.0 and/or LISREL 8.80 for Windows were used to analyze the data. The study’s results indicated that adventure tourists’ risk-taking attitudes positively and significantly influence their adventure behavior, and that their personality traits positively and significantly influence their risk-taking attitudes as exhibited in their white water rafting and scuba diving adventures. Extraversion and openness to experiences traits positively and significantly influence the risk-taking attitude of both groups of adventure-based recreationists, but a negative relationship between conscientiousness and risk-taking attitude was found only in scuba divers. The managerial implications of this study are discussed. For example, adventure tourism managers could stimulate the risk-taking attitudes of participants to enhance their adventure behaviors. Adventure tourism managers should provide interpersonal opportunities for more extraverted participants to accommodate their personal attributes, or offer new and exciting activities, such as new diving spots, to increase participants’ risk-taking attitudes. Future studies should assess a wider variety of adventure activities, and should conduct similar surveys at overseas adventure tourism settings, and should investigate data from recreationists over a period of multiple years. Finally, this study found that adventure behavioral models support the extraversion–attitude–behavior and openness–attitude–behavior links for two adventure-based recreationists.