| dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to identify the benefits acquired by the participants of the Patagonian Expedition Race participants, a multi-day adventure race that takes place in Chilean Patagonia, are in the hunt for in this setting. The interconnected domains of sports tourism, adventure tourism and serious leisure provide a framework for adventure racing. The benefits presented in the theoretical part are: The "flow" experience, the state of "play", exploration, the creation of "communitas", the felt self-change, the benefit of "transferability". The benefit-based theories utilized in the thesis draw on the study of Celsi (1992), more specifically on the transcendent benefits of high-risk sports, which are those benefits that "have properties capable of altering one's perceptions in terms of self, context, and others" (para 3). For this study, both primary and secondary data were used and collected in Chilean Patagonia prior to, during, and after the event in February 2012. Whereas primary data consisted of observations and interviews with single racers and teams, secondary data consisted of pre-race open ended questionnaires, video and audio material. The participants proved having received extensive benefits from participating in the Patagonian Expedition Race, which mostly had a transcendental nature. The racers experienced feelings of personal freedom, timelessness, playfulness, emergence of the true self, and harmony with the environment. Participating in the PER was said to give the chance to explore territories that would be hardly reachable otherwise and strong social bonds and team spirit were also identified. Feelings of personal development were associated by the racers with the Patagonian Expedition Race and previous adventure races in which they had previously taken part. Finally, the racers found the benefits acquired through the PER and previous adventure races to be applicable to daily life.
Keywords: Benefits, adventure racing, flow, communitas, self-change, Patagonia | no_NO |
