“Soldiers of paint”: Relationship between leisure adventure combat sport and quality of life

Abstract

Adventure sports tourism has shown consistent growth during the last several decades as a leisure activity that stands as an antithesis of traditional leisure tourism. This emerging tourism trend has revealed a field of research still in its infancy. Paintball as an adventure (combat) sport has developed over the past three decades as a growing leisure time activity across the globe. The purpose of this research was to determine what influenced these ‘soldiers of paint’ to participate in paintball during their leisure time and the subsequent impact on their quality of life. The electronic measuring instrument, applying a five-point Likert scale, was made available via social media. A total of 506 respondents from across the globe participated in this research. An exploratory factor analysis on the leisure aspects of paintball, positive sport lifestyle, leisure and recreation life domain positive/negative effect and quality of life was conducted. The identified factors obtained acceptable reliabilities and medium to high correlations between the factors are evident.

Keywords: Leisure; Adventure combat sport; Quality of life; ‘Soldiers of paint’.