The role of socioeconomic conditions in the citizen's motivation for participating in public sports

The aim of this research was to study the role of socioeconomic conditions in the citizen's motivation for participating in public sports in Mashhad. The present study takes a descriptive, correlative and field approach. The statistical population consisted of the citizens of Mashhad, who were participating in public sports in the city's parks in Summer 2013. Since the population was unlimited, using the random cluster sampling, 4 out of 13 districts, namely Behesht, Ghadir, Koohsangi and Mellat Parks were chosen. Using Morgan table, 384 people were selected and discarding the corrupt questionnaires, of this number 359 questionnaires were analyzed. To gather the data on socioeconomic conditions we used Ghodratnama questionnaire (2012) and for the motivation variable we utilized the Hong questionnaire (2010), which was submitted to 12 sports management professors to confirm the content validity after being translated and localized according to our culture. The tool reliability was gained respectively through the Cronbach's Alpha (α=.83) and (=α.79). In order to analyze the data we used descriptive indicators and statistical tests Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Pearson Correlation and linear multivariate regression were used simultaneously in inferential statistics. The results showed that there was a positive significant relation between the socioeconomic conditions and the citizen's motivation for participation. The most important factors for the participation of citizens in public sports were social class, income rate and parent's education level.