Petra Anić

Character Strengths and Well-Being : Are there Gender Differences?

This study investigated possible gender differences in the relationship between character strengths and life satisfaction. Two questionnaires were administered to 818 students (488 females and 330 males), Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) (Peterson & Seligman, Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification, 2004) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, Journal of Personality Assessment 49 (1):71–75, 1985). Zest, hope, and gratitude had the strongest link to life satisfaction. Women and men differed significantly in ten character strengths, but they did not differ in their life satisfaction. Five highest-weighted strengths for women were integrity, kindness, love, gratitude, and fairness, while men weighed highest the strengths of integrity, hope, humor, gratitude, and curiosity. Significant predictors of life satisfaction are also different. For women, life satisfaction was predicted by zest, gratitude, hope, appreciation of beauty, and love, whereas men’s life satisfaction was predicted by creativity, perspective, fairness, and humor. These findings seem to be partly congruent with gender stereotypes. Life satisfaction entails living in accordance with the strengths especially valued in the culture.

Willingness to engage in physically challenging activities as a visitor-segmentation criterion: the case of five protected areas in Catalonia

Recreational and sports activities in protected natural settings have increased in recent decades. Despite the extensive literature addressing the segmentation of visitors in protected natural settings, to date, the willingness to engage in physically challenging activities has not been considered a potential segmentation criterion. Moreover, very few segmentation studies in the field provide additional empirical evidence about the extent to which the descriptors used influence the assignment to a particular segment. Therefore, drawing on results from 1 597 questionnaires collected from visitors in five protected areas (Catalonia, Spain), the main intention of this applied research was to add to current knowledge and provide a multi-dimensional perspective on the role that socio-demographic, trip, motivational and attitudinal characteristics play on visitors’ willingness to engage in physically challenging activities. Our results revealed that in terms of the level of importance that they attributed to engaging in challenging physical activities, visitors in the areas studied are not a homogeneous group. Although the allocation of visitors to particular segments varied significantly according to the descriptors selected, logistic regression analysis revealed that motivational and trip behaviour descriptors had a stronger capacity to predict segment membership.