Sport Tourists’ Involvement with a Destination

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine sport tourists' involvement with a destination that hosts a sport event to enable understanding of how a tourist-destination relationship forms. To bolster this understanding, the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) is applied as a framework to assess sport tourists' involvement with a destination across four progressive stages. A questionnaire was administered to sport tourists in an international marathon event in the US (N = 1029). To allocate these sport tourists into distinct stages that represent an increased psychological connection to the destination, a three-step staging tool using Destination Involvement (DI) was applied. The findings indicate the progressive development of DI among these sport tourists results in increasingly high place attachment and revisit intentions. The results provide support for DI as an indicator that allows destination marketers to understand sport tourists' destination attitude, as well as predict behavioral intention.

Serious about leisure, serious about destinations: mountain bikers and destination attractiveness

“…Destination attractiveness "reflects the feelings, beliefs and opinions that an individual has about a destination's perceived ability to provide satisfaction in relation to his or her special vacation needs" (Hu & Ritchie, 1993, p. 25). There is a synergy between destination and activity in sport tourism (Filo et al, 2011); destinations provide opportunities for the desired experiences to occur.…”

“…Various sports-related activities -and the travel associated with them -reflect global consumer culture and have become a means to shape personal identity and obtain authentic experiences. Due in part to sport, place-based competition for visitors and events is intense in the global marketplace (Filo, Chen, King, & Funk, 2011;Higham & Hinch, 2009) and decision makers need to understand destination attractiveness and tourist involvement to achieve sustainable destination development.…”

The role of congruecy within the participant sport involvement and loyalty process.

“…While recent studies have explored the relationships between certain involvement components , studies comparing the individuals occupying the different involvement levels are still limited (Beaton et al, 2009;Filo, Chen, King, & Funk, 2013;Funk, Beaton, & Pritchard, 2011). An analysis of different involvement levels was expected to allow for a greater understanding of the mechanisms which move individuals between the levels, including what attracts individuals to begin participation and what may help retain participants.…”

“…Finally, scales such as the MOMS (Ogles & Masters, 2007) and models like the PCM Filo, Chen, King, & Funk, 2013) show the capability to generate valuable market segmentations for practical uses. Still, a greater understanding of these segments and how individuals move between them is needed .…”

“…In particular, the PCM has demonstrated it can create involvement segments based along four levels of sport involvement . While recent studies continue to explore the relationships between involvement components , and the effects of including an additional component such as negotiation-efficacy within the involvement process (Ridinger et al, 2012) or to measure loyalty outcomes (Filo et al, 2013), these studies comparing the individuals occupying the different segments are still limited. To date, no study has empirically examined relationships between the proposed moderators, often characterized as outcomes and inputs, which generate movement between the levels.…”