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1. Introduction
Taiwan has seen rapid economic growth recently, with its gross national income reaching US $17,590. The Taiwanese have switched to two-day weekends and are becoming more health conscious; they are also eager to pursue leisure activities. Taiwan’s government is attempting to provide a variety of leisure activities suitable for all ages, genders, habits, employment backgrounds, and physical abilities. The government is promoting sports in order to help people switch from an indoor to an outdoor lifestyle and acquire a lifetime sport habit. Because of the increasing demand for leisure activities, Taiwan’s current number of public leisure facilities has become inadequate. Therefore, Taipei needs more public sports centres to enable the Taiwanese to more easily attend sports activities, perform community service, pursue lifetime learning courses, and enjoy artistic activities. The vision of Taiwan’s government is to implement “sports anytime, sports anywhere, and sports for everybody” in its capital, Taipei. However, Taipei’s government has frozen hiring and budgets and has thus had to use an operate-transfer (OT) strategy, by which nongovernment organizations are called on to manage the centres. The selected nongovernment organizations must support a variety of sports activities, courses, exhibitions, and community programs in the sports centres while helping city residents improve their health and quality of life.
According to the Department of Sports and Taipei’s statistical data, Taipei transferred 12 sport centres to nongovernmental organizations from 2003 to 2012. The usage of the centres increased each year, reaching a record high in 2011 with 12,000,000 person-times, indicating that Taipei residents enjoy accessing the centres’ leisure activities and that the government’s goal matched the people’s requirements. As market competitors have now emerged, sports centre performance and management...