Scuba Divers’ Motivations and Involvement: A Research on Turkey*

Abstract

Turkey is situated in a temperate zone and encircled by seas on three sides. Accordingly, scuba diving became an important component of the country’s tourism. The main purposes of this study is to investigate scuba divers’ motivations and to determine their involvement levels with scuba diving. The relationship between scuba divers’ motivations and involvement was also be investigated. Within the framework of these purposes, “Modified Involvement Scale” developed by Kyle et al. (2007) and Todd et al.’s (2001) Motivation Scale were used. In the research, convenience sampling was used from the non-probability methods and 311 survey forms were collected through both web-based questionnaires and face-to-face interviews from scuba divers in Turkey. To examine the impacts of motivations on scuba divers’ involvement with scuba diving regression analysis was utilized from methods of multivariate data analysis. According to the research findings, motivations of scuba divers can be analyzed in six headings namely, “escape”, “learning”, “stature”, “social interaction”, “personal challenge” and “adventure”. In addition, the findings of this research showed that scuba divers’ involvement with this activity can be examined in four dimensions be it, “attraction”, “centrality”, ”identity” and “social bonding”. According to the results of regression analysis performed, while attraction dimension is affected by escape and adventure, centrality dimension is affected by escape, learning and social interaction. In addition, escape, learning and stature has an impact on identity dimension. Lastly, learning, social interaction and adventure have an impact on social bonding dimension. Based on the research results, recommendations for future studies and tourism practitioners were suggested.