An Exploration of High-Risk Leisure Consumption through Skydiving

Abstract

A sociocultural approach is used to explore voluntary high-risk consumption. Specifically, we examine the dynamics of individuals' motives, risk perceptions, and benefit/cost outcomes of participation in increasingly popular high-risk leisure activities such as skydiving, climbing, and BASE jumping (parachuting from fixed objects). An ethnography of a skydiving subculture provides the primary empirical data. We propose an extended dramatic model that explains both macroenviron-mental and inter- and intrapersonal influences and motives for high-risk consumption. Key findings indicate (1) an evolution of motives that explains initial and continuing participation in high-risk activities and (2) a coinciding evolution of risk acculturation that leads to the normalization of risk.