Rio 2016 Olympic Games: Brand and the reciprocal effects of touristic destinations

Abstract

This study analyzes the effect of Brazil's national tourism brand on the image of Rio de Janeiro as the host city of the 2016 Olympic Games, and the reciprocal effect of Rio de Janeiro on Brazil, considering both as tourist destinations. A quantitative study was employed using structured questionnaires, with a sample of foreign respondents ( n = 340) and a simultaneous equation method. A positive reciprocal effect was found. In general, the perception of a country as a tourist destination influences destinations within that country. However, the Brazil destination brand image did not influence Rio. This situation was proved to be an exception to the rule, the sports mega-event context probably contributing to the result.

Impacts of host city image in the country destination branding in sport mega-event context: exploring cognitive and affective image dimensions

“…The influences of event image in those places have been investigated, but the relations between the two places, as the influence of the host city in the nation image is a new approach. This was partially investigated in Ferreira et al (2022), it was observed that there is a greater influence of the host city in the country than the opposite, which strengthens the thesis of the impact of the event itself, but also of the host city.…”

“…Considering that context, the city impacts of hosting the event can overflow for the nation branding, especially for the image. Rio's overall city image as a host of Olympics had influenced on Brazil's overall image as a tourist destination (Ferreira et al, 2022), so the Rio image dimensions can affect Brazil's overall destination image. Thus, the first hypothesis is:…”

“…Valduga et al (2019), for example, investigated Rio and Brazil image, but separately. As the overall image is composed by cognitive and affective dimension (Baloglu and McClear, 1999); and considering that host city overall image can overflow for the overall nation image like in Ferreira et al (2022), we supposed that the cognitive and affective dimensions of the city could also predict the overall image of the nation as tourist destination:…”

“…As a result, those events have been the focus of investigation in many research studies (e.g. Swart et al, 2018;Ferrari and Guala, 2018;Balsas, 2018;Wener et al, 2016;Tasci et al, 2018;Singh and Zhou, 2016;Kaplanidou et al, 2016;Caiazza and Audrescht, 2015;Ferreira and Giraldi, 2020;Ferreira et al, 2022). Some articles deal with the relationship between the event image and tourist destination image (Walker et al, 2013), including the transfer of images in these cases (Deng and Li, 2013).…”

Cultural Entertainment Consumption and Empathy Communication Mechanism

“…In the primary stage, the idea of educating people through sports resulted in a narrative form with a focus on recording, supplemented with empathy and experience (Baker, 1998 ). On this basis, scholars have carried out academic research on the theme of sports, successively made explorations on the screen culture related to issues of nation, country, and esthetics, and officially launched the integration of sports, short video, and films (Barber, 2014 ; Rodesiler, 2014 ; Ferreira et al, 2022 ). As an integral part of the film family, sports film has many fans, and its research has attracted extensive attention from experts in various fields of academia.…”