The determination of fitness participants' leisure involvement in recreational activities and perceived service quality levels

The aim of this study is to determine the level of interest and perceived service quality of the participants who are members of fitness centers towards recreational activities and to examine the relationship between the variables. The sample group of the study was determined by a simple random sampling method and consisted of 388 female and 649 male participants. The ones used to collect data in the research; "Personal Information Form", "Leisure Involvement Scale-LIS" developed by Kyle et al. (2007) and adapted into Turkish by Gürbüz et al. (2015) were used. As another scale, the "Perceived Service Quality of Sports-Fitness Centers Scale (SFC-PSQS)" developed by Uçan (2007) was used. In the analysis of data; t-Test and ANOVA tests were applied to compare the leisure time involvement and perceived service quality according to the demographic characteristics of the participants. TUKEY test was used to determine the direction of significant difference. Pearson Correlation Test was applied to determine the relationship between the variables. According to the t-Test results of the study, a significant difference was observed in the "Gender", "Marital status" and "Active sports branch (except fitness)" variables in the mean scores of SFC-PSQS and LIS (p<0.05). According to the results of the Anova Test of the study, there was a significant difference in the variables of "Body structure", "Weekly use of the sports center", "Time to do sports" and "Purpose of participation" in the mean scores of SFC-PSQS and LIS (p<0.05), while "Age No significant difference was observed in the variables of", "Educational status" and "Occupation". According to the Pearson Correlation Test results of the study, no significant relationship was observed in the "mean household income" variable in the mean scores of SFC-PSQS and LIS. When the relationship between the leisure time involvement of the participants and the perceived service quality of the sports-fitness centers was examined, a statistically low-level positive relationship was found. As a result, it can be mentioned that if there is an increase in the leisure time involvement of the participants, an increase in the perceived service quality levels can also be observed.