Speaker
Description
Accessibility of PA environments is a factor that essentially affects the PA behavior of the population and the knowledge addressing it is an important resource for sport planning. There is a lot of relevant information available, but it is produced from delineated perspectives and across disciplines. Based on a literature review conducted in the YLLI project, it was found that studies regarding accessibility of PA environments are lacking an overarching conceptual framework which allows constructing of a general picture of the dimensions of accessibility, especially social accessibility. The objective of this paper is to form a framework for interdisciplinary research co-operation.
Spatial-temporal dimensions of accessibility are necessary potentials, but they don’t guarantee participation and it has been suggested that certain social factors in some contexts have greater impact. Social processes, meaning interaction in community, can create obstacles to PA through mechanisms that are not related directly to places or services. Negative attitudes of the community or family, cultural definitions of who can do what and where, restrictions to go to certain places due to other people present, stigmatization etc. may occur.
We create a description of the current application of accessibility dimensions in sports management and research, and further seek to conceptualize the importance of the often-neglected meaning of social aspects between potentials and motivation for the realization of PA. The starting point for literature based conceptual development are the basic ideas of social constructionism, i.e., to emphasize meaning of face-to-face interactions as the basis of the human activities.
