Examination of recreation services in local governments and approaches of urban people to recreational activities: Example of Mersin Metropolitan Municipality

In recent years, the idea of providing services from local and closest to the public has gained popularity. This situation increases the importance of local governments gradually. Local governments have become very important for reasons such as providing efficiency in resource use by providing public goods and services, reducing transaction costs and conforming the goods and services produced in the public sector to the preferences of the local people. This work; It was carried out in order to examine the recreational services/activities carried out by Mersin local governments and the approaches of the people of the city to recreational activities. The study was applied to 317 volunteer participants in total and convenience sampling method was used. Recreation Area Preference Factors Scale (RATE) was used as a data collection tool in the study. According to the findings obtained as a result of the research; the marital status of the participants and the Recreation Area Preference Factors "RATE" sub-dimensions, the "Physical Facilities" sub-dimension mean scores of singles (S.O.=180.64) were higher than married (S.O.=144.35) and there were significant differences. detected. According to another finding, while there was no significant relationship between "Sportive Diversity", "Position" and "Activity" sub-dimensions and educational status, it could be said that there was a significant differances between "Personnel" and "Physical Facilities" sub-dimensions and educational status.