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The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived constraints on participating in mountaineering tourism faced by women, and to empirically verify the dimensionality of those constraints. Survey responses from 314 female mountaineers were collected and four constraint dimensions were identified using confirmatory factor analysis. Three of these dimensions: 'intra-personal', 'inter-personal' and 'structural' constraints support earlier findings in the extant literature, both in general and in the adventure literature more specifically. The identification of a fourth dimension relating to 'family' constraints represents a theoretical contribution to the literature and an additional barrier to women's participation in mountaineering tourism. In previous studies, 'family' constraints have typically been subsumed within 'inter-personal' or 'intra-personal' constraints, but have emerged as a distinctly separate constraint category for women in relation to this particular tourist activity. The findings also have important implications for adventure tourism management practice.

Limited work has explored the relationship between efficacy and personal constraint negotiation for adventure tourists, yet efficacy is pivotal to successful activity participation as it influences people’s perceived ability to cope with constraints, and their decision to use negotiation strategies. This article explores these themes with participants of a commercially organised mountaineering expedition. Phenomenology-based ethnography was adopted to appreciate the social and cultural mountaineering setting from an emic perspective. Ethnography is already being used to understand adventure participation, yet there is considerable scope to employ it further through researchers immersing themselves into the experience. The findings capture the interaction between the ethnographer and the group members, and provide an embodied account using their lived experiences. Findings reveal that personal mountaineering skills, personal fitness, altitude sickness and fatigue were the four key types of personal constraint. Self-efficacy, negotiation-efficacy and other factors, such as hardiness and motivation, influenced the effectiveness of negotiation strategies. Training, rest days, personal health and positive self-talk were negotiation strategies. A conceptual model illustrates these results and demonstrates the interplay between efficacy and the personal constraint negotiation journey for led mountaineers.

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See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archivehttp://shura.shu.ac.uk Women's mountaineering: accessing participation benefits through constraint negotiation strategiesThe purpose of this study is to investigate the strategies women use to negotiate mountaineering participation constraints and the resultant benefits from participation. Survey responses from 321 female mountaineers produced four constraint negotiation dimensions and three participation benefit dimensions using confirmatory factor analysis. Three of the four negotiation dimensions support earlier findings in the literature on women's experiences of adventure activities. The identification of a fourth dimension relating to 'confidence and adaptation' represents a new contribution. Similarly, the three benefit dimensions largely support existing literature. However, some benefits loaded on different dimensions to what has previously been reported and verifying the influence of each negotiation dimension on specific benefit dimensions also represents an original contribution. Therefore, this study extends our understanding of female adventure participants and quantitatively verifies women's constraint negotiation and participation benefits in the context of mountaineering. Accordingly, this study makes an important theoretical contribution to the understanding of women's adventure experiences in mountaineering, which may be of interest to others researching female participation in other adventure activities. The findings also suggest that mountaineering is a space that is being used as a means to resist gendered expectations and to gain empowerment.