Allocentric versus Psychocentric

Allocentric and psychocentric are personality types that will determine not only how a person participates in sport and recreation, but also his or her stance on participation in life. Stanley Plog developed a model of allocentricity and psychocentricity for the tourism industry in 1972. He presented these two personality traits as the opposite ends of a continuum of traits. Psychocentric refers to people who are nervous, not adventurous, self-inhabited, and like structure. On the other end of the spectrum are those who are allocentric, or outgoing, curious, self-confident explorers.

Applying this model to sports, psychocentric participants are those who look for structured sports with rules, little risk, and someone to guide them like a coach, for example, sports like bowling, golf, swimming, or track. Allocentric participants are looking for adventurous sports and sports without boundaries or rules. These allocentric sports could include snowboarding, bike racing, gymnastics, or rugby. Since Plog put these two personality traits on the ends of a spectrum, there are many people who will fall between them and who would enjoy both some structure and adventure built into the same game. These mid-centric personalities would enjoy baseball, soccer, basketball, or football. All are sports with rules and structure, yet with some freedom to try something new and experiment to see if one can obtain the same goal different ways.

In sports tourism these two personality types are used in marketing. Marketers may highlight a place's adventurous activities or creative opportunities to get more allocentric people to visit, while downplaying those aspects and focusing on the peace and tranquility of the area to bring in more psychocentric consumers. Sports marketers also need to focus on the group that will consume the most amount of that sport. Marketing rugby to a conservative, self-conscious consumer will not help the rugby market. A sport should be analyzed for its major traits, placed on the spectrum, and then matched with the personalities or the consumers who fall on the same part of that spectrum.

As it was important research for the tourism industry to have, understanding the different personality types of sports consumers will be beneficial. This will become especially important in the future as there has been a change in the traits of youth sports. With approximately 40 million children between ages 6 and 17 participating in some level of sport, parents are noticing the shift in types of activities that are available to youth. Twenty years ago the goal of participating in sports was to be active and have fun, and many games were played with-out [Page 41]scores, uniforms, or even a proper field. Today, however, more children are encouraged to join organized youth teams, learn how to keep score, and compete against others.