Poster Presentation

Paper ID : 1105-SSRC

¹دانشجوی دکتری مدیریت ورزشی،دانشگاه تهران

²گروه آموزش تربیت بدنی، دانشگاه فرهنگیان، تهران، ایران

Individuals belonging to the upper socio-economic classes, who have more prosperity, tend to engage in higher levels of physical activity compared to those belonging to other classes. Moreover, there is a distinction between the type of sports and games that are popular among those in the upper classes who hold a higher position in society, and those that are popular among the lower classes. There exists a pyramid-like class system in sports, where certain activities like canoeing, sailing, horsemanship, tennis, and golf are perceived to be exclusive to the middle and upper classes of society. On the other hand, sports like football, which have a more general appeal, are not restricted to any particular class. Accordingly, the purpose of this research was to design a model of economic barriers to participation in tennis. The current research is applied research that is conducted qualitatively. The statistical population of the research was managers and owners of clay tennis clubs who had at least 5 years of experience in this field. Sampling was purposeful and due to its non-probability approach, it continued until the point where we reached theoretical saturation. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews. Thus, 10 interviews were analyzed in this research. To analyze the interviews, the thematic analysis method was used with MAXQDA software. The results suggested that the most important economic barriers to participation in clay tennis include the financing of sports equipment and facilities, exorbitant training costs, high prices of coaches, lack of sponsors, lack of government funding, and low purchasing power of customers. Broadly speaking, Tennis is known as an expensive sport in the whole world, and considering the economic issues and international sanctions, the purchasing power of Iranians to participate in tennis is somewhat low. So, it is suggested that the government support and provision of sports facilities and equipment should be placed on the agenda of the government. Similarly, the training of trainers to develop human resources is considered to be a very valuable solution for lowering the price of trainers in this field.

Tennis; economic barriers; Sports participation