Date of Graduation

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

Committee Chair

Robert C. Burns

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of customer satisfaction as it applies to a person recreating at Diamond Lake. More specifically, this study explored satisfaction items across several socio-demographic and trip characteristic variables and attempted to determine which satisfaction items were associated with predicting an overall satisfaction rating. The study took place at Diamond Lake, which is located in south central Oregon, from May 25lh . 2007 to August 3^. 2007. A quantitative survey method was used, with a total of 405 surveys collected. There were three proposed customer satisfaction models in this study. The first model examined the strength of 18 quality items in predicting overall satisfaction. The second model examined the strength of the 18 quality items in predicting their respective domains. The third model examined the strength of the four overall domain scores in predicting overall satisfaction. The first and third models used both a single-item and a multiple-item indicator to represent overall satisfaction. This study also examined four socio-demographic and trip characteristic variables with the single-item indicator of overall satisfaction. The model which predicted the quality items to overall satisfaction accounted for 25% (single-item) and 44% (multi-item) of the total variance. The second model predicting overall domain qualities explained 9-32% of the variance. The third model predicting the overall domain qualities to overall satisfaction accounted for 1 1% (single-item) and 17% (multi-item) of the total variance. In examining the socio-demographic and trip characteristic variables, only gender showed a significant difference in overall satisfaction, with females being more satisfied than males. The results show that the multiple item overall satisfaction indicator provides a more robust outdoor recreation model of customer satisfaction than the sinsle-item indicator.

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