Parental Motivation Toward Youth Residential Summer Camp Enrollment
File(s)
Date
2018-05Author
Nack, Marcus A.
Publisher
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, College of Natural Resources
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Residential youth summer camps offer a plethora of activities and experiences
that can positively affect children’s lives. Children may want to attend summer camp for
a variety of reasons, but ultimately the decision to enroll a child in summer camp is made
by parents. Parental motivations toward youth residential summer camp enrollment are
not fully understood, and this research seeks a better understanding of enrollment
motivations by surveying parents during drop off procedures on the first day of summer
camp. It is important for summer camps to understand why parents feel the need to enroll
their children. With this information, summer camps can strategize approaches to give
parents and children the best possible experiences. The objectives of this research were to
1) investigate parent motivations for enrolling children in summer camps, 2) better
understand the expected outcomes parents have for their children at camps, 3) enable
camps to adapt to meet the needs and expectations of parents, and 4) provide camps with
information about their target audiences. Information was gathered from parents that
enrolled their children at two residential youth summer camps in July and August 2017.
This information revealed similar responses at both surveyed locations. Surveys also
indicated that parents enrolled their children in summer camp because of the factors of
time spent outside, camp activities, and child growth and development. These three
enrollment factors had the strongest agreement responses, and tradition, cost, and
childcare had the lowest agreement responses. Parents indicated that they had high
intrinsic motivation (value-based motivation) and low extrinsic motivation (reward-based
motivation) toward summer camp enrollment. Summer camps could use this information
for strategic planning, summer camp marketing, and summer camp programming. From
this research, recommendations were made about ways to appeal to parents and
ultimately get more parents to enroll their children in summer camps.