Understanding active sport tourist behaviors in small-scale sports events: Stimulus-organism-response approach

Abstract

With the growth in opportunities for amateur athletes to participate in competitive events, a major challenge for policy-makers of a sporting destination is to understand the role of small-scale recurring sporting events in attracting tourists and the variables that influence active sport tourist behavior. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate structural relationships between emotional experiences, perceived value, tourist satisfaction, and destination loyalty within the context of small-scale recurring sporting events by adopting stimulus-organism-response theory. Construct validity of the measurement scale was verified by confirmatory factor analysis, factor loadings, average variance extracted, and construct reliability. Reliability of the measurement scale was verified by Cronbach's alpha analysis. A structural equation modeling test with maximum likelihood estimation was used to examine structural relationships between variables in the proposed model by analyzing responses of 301 survey participants. Results showed positive impacts of (a) emotional experiences on functional value and emotional value, (b) functional value on tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty, and (c) tourist satisfaction on destination loyalty. The results of this study: (1) show it is meaningful to include emotional experiences in examining active sport tourist behaviors; (2) confirm that both small- and large-scale sporting events should be considered as effective marketing strategies aimed at improving tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty; and (3) provide the effectiveness of applying an extended stimulus-organism-response framework in investigating sports-tourist behavior.