The growth of the indoor sports climbing industry has proven the immense potential of this quite young sports discipline. New climbing facilities are constantly opened all around the globe. Given this trend, it becomes crucial to understand the determinants of a climber’s motivation and subsequent motivational consequences. Based on the self-determination theory the present study aims to identify key influences in the motivation of indoor sports climbers. Furthermore, the effects of the varying motivational factors on the climbers’ activity satisfaction as well as indirectly their sport retention and word-of-mouth (WOM) engagement are examined. In order to test the theoretical suppositions of the present study, a survey was conducted among practising indoor sports climbers. Thus, an online administrated questionnaire was distributed to a sample of indoor sports climbers (n = 351) at the “Kletterzentrum Innsbruck” (KI). The results reveal that depended on the degree of self-determination, major changes in the motivation of indoor sports climbers are observable. Intrinsic motivation (IM) and highly self-determined types of extrinsic motivation (EM) were found to positively influence the climbers’ activity satisfaction and subsequently their sport retention and WOM engagement. On the other side, external regulated EM and amotivation were found to be negative predictors of all dependent constructs. Furthermore, the climbers’ activity satisfaction turned out to mediate the relationship between the different motivational factors and the motivational consequences: sport retention and WOM.
Thus, in order to facilitate climbers to become self-regulatory in their behaviour, it is essential to promote a social environment that facilitates the satisfaction of the three psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness) as main sources of self-determined motivation. Service providers should ensure an accurate information delivery and promote a culture that facilitates competence development, is autonomy supportive in nature and allows sports climbers to connect with each other. Such an environment in turn will educate loyal climbers that are more likely to promote their sport, which results in higher revenues and an increased profitability throughout the whole industry.