Leisure Motivation and Satisfaction: A Text Mining of Yoga Centres, Yoga Consumers, and Their Interactions

• Main Author: Susan (Sixue) Jia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-11-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: yoga; motivation; satisfaction; online review; text mining
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4458

Understanding the motivation and satisfaction of yoga consumers is of critical importance for both leisure service providers and leisure researchers to enhance the sustainability of personal lives in terms of physical wellness and mental happiness. For this purpose, this study investigated 25,120 pairs of online ratings and reviews from 100 yoga centres in Shanghai, China using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA)-based text mining, and successfully established the relationship between rating and review. Findings suggest that Chinese yogis are motivated by improving physical condition, improving psychological condition, gracing appearance, establishing social connection, and creating social isolation. In addition to teaching mainstream yoga, yoga centres also provide additional courses. From a consumer perspective, yogis are relatively satisfied with teachers, courses, and the environment, but complain about the supporting staff, membership price, and reservation service. Managerially, yoga centres are encouraged to continue attending to the motivations of yogis, specialising their guidance, and fostering strengths and circumventing weaknesses in their service. This study also contributes by verifying, elaborating on, and tentatively extending the framework of the Physical Activity and Leisure Motivation Scale (PALMS).