Factors affecting parent's willingness to send children for supplementary dance lessons

Driven by parents' education expectations of their children, after-school activities for children have boomed in China and the growth of supplementary dance lessons has been spurred. However, the number of enrollments in supplementary dance lessons remains low. The low enrollment rate implies that parents are less willing to send their children to dance lessons despite the obvious benefits that dancing can bring to their children. This attitude-behavior gap indicates that the attitudes of parents somehow do not correlate to their action (intention). This research explores the factors influencing the decision-making process of parents through the lens of consumption value theory and provides a parents' intention model, which examines the impact of perceived value and risk on the attitudes of parents' willingness towards sending their child for after-school dance lessons in private dance studios.
The samples of this study were surveyed online from September to October in 2021, and all the interviewees came from Guilin China and a total of 388 valid questionnaires were retained for analysis. Result shows that both perceived value and perceived risk are aimed at improving parents' attitudes. Among them, the four dimensions of perceived risk (functional risk, physical risk, service risk, and financial risk) significantly negatively affect parents' attitudes and the four dimensions of perceived value (emotional value, social value, functional value, and epistemic value) all positively affect parents' attitudes. At the same time, parents' attitudes towards supplementary dance lessons will mediate the relationship between perceived risk or perceived value and willingness to send supplementary dance lessons, and attitude positively affects parents' willingness.
This research tested the conceptual framework based on perceived risk and perceived value and its relationship between parents' attitudes and willingness to send children to participate in supplementary dance lessons with parents as the research object. The results give valuable insights into the changing behavior about children's dance among parents and promote the development of children's supplementary dance lessons.