Factors That Motivate Youth in Sport Participation: Examining the Emergence of Lifestyle Sports in Indonesia

Abstract

Factors That Motivate Youth in Sport Participation: Examining the Emergence of Lifestyle Sports in Indonesia

Tara Talitha Global Sport Management, Department of Physical Education The Graduate School Seoul National University

Indonesia, the 4th biggest population in the world, is blessed to have a large population of youth with 62.3 million

respectively 40 percent youth in Southeast Asia is in Indonesia. Youth as the main segment of this study refers to the category of millennial Generation Z, with the age group 15 – 22years old. They value communality and idealism, the instant generation born in the era where the internet is well established. Therefore, in the context of trend adoption, such as music, fashion and including sports, they perceive some things are cool or fun when their peers and the internet confirm it. This is how Lifestyle Sports, the term used by the researcher, fit into the picture. This term is quite recent in the academic literature. Belinda Wheaton(2004) is the scholar who coined the term. She defines lifestyle sports as the sports practiced mostly by young people in the postmodern setting, related to personal factors and lifestyle practices. The examples are

skateboarding, riding BMX, 3x3 basketball playing, parkour, running and many other new emerging sports based on lifestyle and social purposes. This study is aiming to examine the emergence of Lifestyle Sports in Indonesia with two stages. The first stage is to find out what factors motivate youth to participate in lifestyle sports, conducted by survey. Researcher collected 518 samples comprising Gen Z youth from age group 15-24 years old in two cities

Jakarta and Bandung. The survey result analyzed by hierarchical linear model (HLM) showed that there are four significant variables for youth as the motivation factors to participate in lifestyle sports

self efficacy and fun & enjoyment as the intrinsic motivations. Social reward and friends & peers as the extrinsic motivations. Among all the four variables, Social Reward has the highest significant value of 99%. Social reward implies that when youth do certain activities, it should be proper or worthy to be posted in their social media. The second stage is a follow-up of the previous finding, what the significance, implications and future opportunities of lifestyle sports are. Seven in-depth interviews of youth trendsetter, expert and sport academicians were conducted to explore their perspectives on this topic. The interview findings indicate that lifestyle sport is significant for youth since social reward and communality are naturally embedded in lifestyle sports, attributes that other conventional sports could not fulfill. These elements are the reasons why youth fundamentally value lifestyle sports

by doing lifestyle sports, such as skateboarding or freestyle, they could have their self-branding and they could post it in their social media, earn the attribute by their peers, for example This is Abram, the freestyler or Febby, the skateboarder. It rewards them the feeling of significance and sense of belonging to their lifestyle sports community. As an emerging trend, Lifestyle Sports will be in the long run

it has sustainable pattern of participation, unique characteristics and this trend will penetrate globally with the boost of multiplatform media in particular digital media and the international recognition, as well. _____________________________________________________________ Keywords: Youth Sports, Motivation, Sport Participation, Lifestyle Sports Student Number: 2015-22367