An investigation into the motivations for adolescents attending street dance competitions: Exploring the service quality and identifying the satisfaction gained.

Abstract

Motivational research has been conducted around sports events and festivals, while also focusing on service quality and satisfaction of attendees. The dance industry is yet another area that has been vastly researched; however, the lack of research conducted in a dance competition setting is very prominent. This concludes that there are gaps in the literature that need to be filled. Through developing the gaps in literature it has established an understanding of service quality of competitions and whether or not this leads to participant satisfaction. This research project will investigate the motivations for adolescents attending street dance competitions; exploring the service quality and identifying the satisfaction gained. By conducting a literature review in both the dance industry and the events industry, it has created a band of knowledge that can be developed further. This investigation used various frameworks developed to understand attendees of different events and has adapted these to fit into a dance competition context. A mixed method approach was adopted for this research project, using online questionnaires and telephone interviews. Likert scale questionnaires were developed along with semi-structured interview questions. A thematic analysis of the data was implemented, with the use of SPSS to generate the results for the Likert style questionnaires. In conclusion, the results showed socialising with friends and meeting new people at competitions was of high importance to participants. Furthermore, experience quality was also rather significant in the findings, moreover the suggestion that service quality plays a key role, in some respect. Participants have a general sense of accomplishment and achievement when at competition, whether they win or lose,and the suggestion could be made that dance and competitions could assist and enhance an individuals skills, confidence and self-esteem.