Running event quality: Conceptualization and measurement scale

Abstract

This paper aims to develop event quality measurement scale in running event context. This particular type of track event became more popular in many countries in recent years. The Big Five destinations of running events: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, and New York are among those final destinations of runners around the world. To attract these runners, quality of the event would be the key success factor. For this paper, the measurement scale has been divided into three dimensions: physical environment, staff attitude and experience of runner after participating in the running event. Samples has been selected using, first, cluster sampling method according to the running event organized in Bangkok during March 2019. The Ultra Park Run Thailand 100 was selected due to the number of participants, approximately 5,000 runners, and it was the only big running event during that time. Second, 109 runners who participated in running events has been selected using simple random sampling method. There are 18 items for this measurement scale. The result of exploratory factor analysis illustrated that all items have factor loading more than 0.4 exempt one item, st-att5 has factor loading close to 0.4 with communalities is 0.268, thus it is deleted during this stage. Furthermore, result of reliability coefficient test shows that all dimensions have Cronbach's a higher than 0.7. The alpha coefficient for physical environment dimension was 0.868, staff attitude was 0.821, and experience was 0.771. Therefore, all items are correlate to each other and it is sufficient to explain the running event quality construct.