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The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of marathon enthusiasts' perceptions towards venue quality, race competition, organisation and service quality on their intention to participate in a destination marathon in the emerging region's context. It also seeks to investigate the mediating effect of perceived value and the moderating effect of intention to visit the destination on the intention to participate.

Using purposive sampling technique, 177 valid Singapore marathon enthusiasts were sampled to look into their intention towards participating in destination marathon in Sarawak (marathon held in Kuching). The data were analysed using the partial least squares–structural equation modelling (PLS–SEM).

The results show that amongst the other determinants, perceived organisation and perceived service quality do not contribute to perceived value and intention to participate in destination marathon. Perceived value is found to mediate all path relationships except the relationship between perceived organisation and intention to participate. Moreover, the relationship between perceived value and intention to participate is significantly moderated by intention to tour Sarawak.

This study makes a substantial contribution to the extant literature pertaining to destination tourism and value-based marketing in an emerging market. In particular, it highlights the importance of perceived value and the relevance of destination tourism in joining a sport event on foreign soil. The use of PLS–SEM also allows a rigorous assessment of the relationships under investigation and provides better estimations of the phenomenon.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between image congruence, tourist satisfaction and intention to revisit in marathon tourism. The results show that both affective image congruence (AIC) and cognitive image congruence (CIC) have a positive influence on tourist satisfaction and intention to revisit in the context of marathon tourism. The results also reveal that demographic and behavioural characteristics have a significant impact on revisiting intentions; and past experience of marathon tourism controls the relationship between image congruence and tourist satisfaction.

Sports events are tourist attractions and their image components can relate to the destination image concept and structure. This study examined sports event images held by active and passive sports tourists at four marathon races in Germany. Some differences in the perception of event images were found for active and passive sports tourists as well as for different types of destinations. For active sports tourists, emotional, physical and organisational image associations were clustered closer. For passive sports tourists, social and historical image associations were clustered closer. The type of destination elicited different event images among active and passive sports tourists.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of runner’s concern for the environment plays as a source of differentiation in the type of race they choose to participate. The study also seeks to explore how the environmental consciousness relates with participation motives in an urban and rural race setting.

Participants from urban and rural races were surveyed to explore the relationships between their environmental consciousness, their race selection type and the sport tourism motivational profile for the runners in each of these race locations.

A logistic regression was statistically significant in predicting urban vs rural race choice, correctly classifying 84 percent of cases. Increases in motivational responses relating to self-enrichment, social needs, catharsis and aggression were all associated with an increased likelihood in choosing an urban race. Conversely, motivational constructs related to tourism (e.g. destination attributes) were particularly effective in classifying rural race participants. Subsequent tests revealed significant differences in five of the nine race motives between runners based on their low, medium and high levels of environmental consciousness.

Implications from this study serve to extend the literature on sport and tourism sustainability by understanding the environmental paradigm and sport tourism motives of distance runners in urban and rural race destinations.

This study also serves event organizers from a practical standpoint by offering suggestions to market and execute events in line with participants’ underlying motives which were found to be different in an urban vs rural setting.

In a highly competitive event space like road races, effective differentiation and marketing are paramount to attracting participants. This study advances the research in this area by exploring the role that runners’ concern for the environment plays in their destination and event choice, as well as the differences that may exist in the sport tourism motivational profile for runners at an urban vs rural race destination.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse quantitative and qualitative image aspects of destinations hosting a small‐scale sport event, as perceived by spectators and participants.

A survey was conducted at different sport events hosted by destinations in a rural setting. The data are analysed using confirmatory factor analyses and correspondence analyses.

The results suggest several differences between the image perception of participants and spectators. These can be attributed to different levels of involvement, which is very high for participants. The perception of the qualitative image aspects showed that unique features were associated with the destination, such as sport themes or organizational aspects of the sport event visited. Further, it is shown that the quantitatively measured indicators of affective destination image have a great influence on the image of rural sport event tourism destinations.

A research limitation could arise due to the sample, as almost all sport tourists were German. A more international sample might have shown different results. Future research should analyse samples of different sports, concluding whether the sport performed also influences behaviour.

For marketing communications it is essential to utilise emotions to promote the destination, as they are a very essential element of destinations hosting sport events.

This research contributes to the understanding of images held by spectators and participants of small‐scale sport events hosted in rural destinations. The value is the large sample, consisting of various rural destinations, which allows for general patterns of the perceived image to be drawn.

This study investigated the runner's satisfaction with the First Knoxville Marathon, held in Knoxville, Tennessee. A total of 963 questionnaires were obtained and confirmed as data for analysis. The four-page survey instrument attempted to extract runners' satisfaction with race attributes and general demographic characteristics. The study employed factor analysis to delineate the underlying dimensions of the runners' satisfactions about 17 race attributes and MANOVA to investigate whether there were significant satisfaction differences among delineated factors based on general demographic information related to the First Knoxville Marathon. Approximately 23% of respondents indicated their household income to be over $120,000, over 80% of respondents had a college degree, and age of approximately 80% of respondents was ranged from 26 to 55. MANOVA results showed that there were significant differences of satisfaction levels among different distance completed by marathoners. Recommendations and limitation are discussed in the conclusions.

This study aims to examine the extent of collaboration and networking between local festival stakeholders by focusing on the differences in how they evaluate themselves and other stakeholders.

A questionnaire directed toward different stakeholder groups involving 1,092 respondents was administered at six selected festivals in Ghana, West Africa.

In terms of self-evaluated collaboration and networking, the festival organizers considered themselves to have the highest risk, followed by the sponsors and vendors. However, when the stakeholders assessed each other, most agreed that they experienced higher risk when dealing with vendors. To reduce the risks of dealing with vendors, it is recommended that vendors be registered, accredited and allocated selling spaces before festivals begin.

It is helpful to understand the nature of decision power or different views of collaboration and networking among stakeholders. Further, this study offers insights to understand stakeholders’ motivations to participate in local festivals.

The combination of collaboration and networking between local festival stakeholders into a conceptual model allows the current findings to offer meaningful theoretical and practical implications.

The paper aims to examine the relationships among marathon spectator motivation, satisfaction and behavioral intention in China.

Date were collected from three Chinese marathon races. The paper presents the conceptual model of the study and adopted a mixed method to identify the motivations of marathon spectators; structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the measurement and substantive models; regression analysis was used to detect the specific effects of the various spectator motivations on spectator satisfaction and behavioral intention.

The paper provides empirical evidences about how marathon spectator motivation affects the behavioral intention. The research results from a path analysis of the spectator motivation–satisfaction–behavioral intention model show that: spectator motivation has significant positive effects on behavioral intention, the indirect path dominates the total effect of motivation on behavioral intention via satisfaction as a mediating variable; satisfaction is positively associated with behavioral intention, and it plays mediate role between spectator motivation and behavioral intention. The result of regression analysis indicates that various spectator motivations have different influences on the satisfaction and behavioral intention, motives of excitement and diversion have significant effect on satisfaction and behavioral intention, but socialization motive is not significantly associated with the satisfaction and behavioral intention.

This paper first fulfills an identified need to explore mass sports event spectator motivations and its influential mechanism on behavioral intention among Chinese marathon races by survey. It contributes greatly to the literature of mass sports spectator motivation and consumption theory, provides important managerial implications for Chinese sports organizations as to how to improve spectator orientation degree.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to investigate if the three service quality dimensions (service environment, interaction and outcome quality), proposed by Brady and Cronin (2001), influence the development of event loyalty, among runners of the “‘Alexander the Great’ International Marathon”, and to test if running loyalty moderates the relationship between event quality and event loyalty.

In all, 368 runners participated in the study and filled the Sport Event Quality Questionnaire (Theodorakis et al., 2015) and an adjusted version of the Leisure Involvement Questionnaire (Kyle et al., 2010).

The results indicated that only the service environment and outcome dimensions contributed significantly to the prediction of event loyalty, while, and in contrast to other sport services, interaction quality was not shown to be an important determinant for the development of event loyalty. Furthermore, running involvement was shown to play a moderating role in the relationship between event quality and event loyalty. Service quality is more important for the development of event loyalty among low- than high-involved runners. The theoretical and applied implications of these results are discussed.

The study provided results on how high- and low-involved runners perceive event quality, and for which of these groups the event quality is an important antecedent for the development of event loyalty.

Investigating the moderating role of involvement on the relationship between service quality and loyalty has also applied value. While committed runners have been traditionally seen as a key target group for event marketing professionals, the majority of runners in city marathons today are more leisure oriented. The increase in the number of leisure runners is actually the reason for the rapid growth of city marathons in the last few years. Meeting the needs of these leisure runners and increasing their loyalty levels is therefore a key task for marathon marketers today.

This study contributes to the literature, as for the first time it explores the moderating role of involvement on the relationship between service quality and loyalty in the context of a sport event.