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Mass participation sport events, such as running events, have the potential to foster social capital among event participants. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interrelationships among sport event participation, social capital and various (behavioral, psychological, informational and negative) outcomes.

Following Putnam's social capital approach, a research model was developed and tested using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, based on survey data from 301 runners with varied running histories and event experiences.

Results showed a limited impact of sport event participation on participants' social capital, indicating that the temporary interactions within the event timeframe were insufficient to generate sustainable social capital among event participants. Nevertheless, significant relationships were found between social capital and behavioral, psychological and informational outcomes of social capital, suggesting that social capital can be converted to a range of benefits for participants and the event community.

Event marketers and sponsors should take strategic actions to enhance participants' social experience and cultivate social capital, which may help them gain support from the event community irrespective of past experiences with participation.

This study extends Putnam's social capital framework into mass participation sport event context. As an initial effort to quantitatively test the linkage among event participation, social capital and various outcomes, this study offers empirical insights into the role of sport event participation in generating long-term social benefits for event participants.

Evidence of the link between major sports events and increased participation at grassroots level is somewhat mixed. The purpose of this paper is to examine attitudinal changes to sport participation among spectators associated with seven sports events held in Great Britain in 2014.

Primary data were gathered from 4,590 spectators aged 16 and over who attended one of the events. Both positive (inspiration) effects and negative (discouragement) effects were considered through the lens of the transtheoretical model (TTM).

The evidence from this research indicates that event audiences belong primarily to the latter (more active) stages of the TTM. It was also found that attending sports events can further fuel the existing desire of contemplators to increase participation, whereas the catalytic effect among pre-contemplators is arguably less potent. Virtually no discouragement effects were observed across the different TTM stages.

The research stops short of measuring actual changes in sport participation post-event of individuals in the different TTM stages and any attribution of such behaviour changes to events. This is both a limitation of the current research and a natural direction for future research.

The main implications for promoting sport participation through the medium of sports events include attracting more people in the early stages of the TTM, greater collaboration between different event stakeholders and the building of sport participation strategies into the event planning phase.

Models of behaviour change such as the TTM have seldom been applied to document the current and/or planned sport participation behaviour of individuals in a sport event context or to examine attitudinal changes towards sport as a result of attending an event. An adapted version of the TTM has been proposed to overcome the limitations of the traditional model.

This paper aims to examine whether participation in training and development (T&D) events is associated with employees’ affective commitment and propensity to enact innovative behaviours in small professional services firms. The study also investigates associations between both attitudes towards T&D and policy and practice supportive of T&D and levels of participation in T&D events.

Data from 203 employees in small professional services firms employing 50 or fewer staff were analysed using regression analysis and PROCESS macro.

Only policy and practice supportive of T&D was associated with participation levels. Participation in T&D events was positively related to affective commitment. Furthermore, employees who participated in more T&D events were more likely to enact innovative behaviours, while affective commitment mediated the positive relationship between number of T&D events attended and innovative behaviours. Contrary to expectations, neither participation in just training nor participation in just development was associated with either attitudes or behaviours.

The findings have important implications for small firms which tend to rely on wholly work-based experiences for the development of employees’ knowledge and skills. Such an approach to learning for work may inadvertently shape a workforce that lacks commitment to the organisation and that has a diminished capacity for innovative behaviours.

There is limited research on how T&D affects attitudes and behaviours in small firms. Large and small firms are fundamentally different, thus findings from studies in large firms may not extend to small firms.

This study aimed to detect the relationships between mindfulness and events participation, and then between the later and psychological empowerment.

The proposed model's underlying hypotheses were empirically tested with data collected through an online survey addressed to a convenience sample of frequent leisure participants (n = 199). The authors applied the structural equation model (SEM) to confirm the aforementioned relationships. To assess the adequacy of the psychometric properties of the measures, the authors performed a confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement model, with a maximum likelihood estimation method.

Under the effects of the lockdown period environment, the results express a positive relationship between a mindful state of mind – related to observation/attention – and the yearnings and perceptions about the participation in events. This relationship for consistency was proven to be moderated by the perception of the participation importance to the individual subjective well-being/mental health. Due to participation insights, there was a positive effect on psychological empowerment, supporting the relationship that had been hypothesized.

The authors propose and test a new model that contributes to the theory and examines how mindfulness behavior can effect more alluring and intense participation in events and what are the anticipated outcomes in terms of psychological empowerment.

The purpose of this article is to illuminate the relations of work-related practices of local managers of live music events in Ostwestfalen-Lippe (OWL) and barriers and needs of vulnerable customers (VC) in order to explore possibilities to increase cultural participation of VC.

This article explores work-related practices of managers of live music events in OWL and asks if and to what extent these practices have an influence on the cultural participation of “vulnerable customers” (VC). It combines the findings of two studies: a) an explorative investigation on the work-related self-conceptions of managers of live music events in OWL (Study 1), and b) a sub-project on cultural participation of VC, which is part of the research project “kulturPreis. Increasing cultural participation through innovative and economically sustainable pricing concepts”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Study 2).

It can be stated that there is an imbalance of knowledge: while VC tend to have a clear understanding of which barriers are the responsibility of managers of live music events, managers tend to lack knowledge regarding the needs of VC, and regarding the interrelationships between financial and social barriers facing them. Whether this knowledge and understanding can be developed in the future depends on the possibilities of exchanges between managers of live music events, cultural institutions, welfare organisations, political institutions and not least VC.

Based on these studies, this article combines different approaches by linking work-related practices of managers of live music events with cultural participation of VC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether attending one‐off sport events might inspire audiences to increase their participation in sport or recreational physical activity.

Primary data collection was undertaken with spectators aged 16 and over at three major sport events held in the UK in 2010. The findings are based on an aggregate sample of 2,312 respondents.

Around two‐thirds of respondents reported that their event experience had inspired them to increase their participation in sport or physical activity. The inspiration effect varied according to age and respondents’ predisposition to sport. The main factors that caused the inspiration were linked directly to the athletes and the competition. The provision of information about opportunities to undertake sport was found to be the most important lever to convert inspiration into participation.

Evidence of the impact of major sport events on mass participation is relatively scarce and inconclusive. In order for any “trickle‐down” effect to occur, it would be reasonable to assume that audiences would first be inspired by their event experience. It is this basic sense of inspiration that the research aimed to measure.

More research is needed to consider residents’ perceptions prior to hosting large-scale events. This paper contributes new insight on residents’ perceptions of placemaking analysed by considering awareness, enthusiasm and participation prior to hosting a large-scale event. Placemaking is becoming increasingly important and this insight can help planners understand how locals perceive change and event planning preparations.

454 residents of Rijeka, Croatia completed a survey (seven-point Likert scale) of 17 placemaking principles, asked in three ways: (1) how you feel; (2) how you believe people near you feel and (3) if you feel that planning/preparing for ECoC 2020 has made a difference. The data analysis considers socio-demographics and the significance of awareness, enthusiasm and participation as factors affecting residents’ perceptions of placemaking.

The study found respondents originally from Rijeka expressed statistically significant higher level of agreement. Where statistically significant differences exist, female respondents expressed statistically significant higher levels of agreement. For six statements, the distribution of results was not similar for all age groups. Awareness and enthusiasm seems to influence placemaking principles to a greater extent than participation in this study, but all have proven to have statistically significant positive impacts on the placemaking principles assessed.

Planners need to focus on effective promotional activities aimed at awareness and enhance enthusiasm to help increase perceptions of placemaking and increase local quality of life.

explores perceptions of “self” and “how others feel” by assessing principles of placemaking associated with the case of Rijeka. This allows researchers to explore understandings of how people perceive the attitudes of their fellow residents.

This paper aims to explore the social impact that two events, the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Clipsal 500, have on young residents (16-19 years old) of Adelaide. The purpose of this paper is to examine how young people participate in these events and how this affects their sense of involvement in the event and contributes to their identity development.

A mixed methods approach was adopted in which focus groups and questionnaires were conducted with secondary school students. As an exploratory study, focus groups (n=24) were conducted in the first stage of the research. The results of the focus groups were used to develop a questionnaire that resulted in 226 useable responses. The final stage of the research explored one event in further depth in order to determine the influence of different participation levels.

This study found that young people demonstrated more involvement in the Adelaide Fringe Festival and their identities were more influenced by this event. Further investigation of the Adelaide Fringe Festival also indicated that level of participation affects the social outcomes gained, with those participating to a greater degree achieving higher involvement and increased identity awareness. This is demonstrated through a model which aims to illustrate how an event impact an individual based on their role during the event.

This paper applies two leisure concepts in order to analyse the impact of events. Activity involvement is a concept which examines the importance of the activity in the participant's life. Also of importance to young people is how activities contribute to their identities, especially because they are in a transitional period of their lives.

This research aims to develop a moderated mediation model to examine the relationships among participants' motivation, organizational identification and participation loyalty with perceived business practice corporate social responsibility (CSR) in philanthropic road-running events.

The data come from a questionnaire survey that was administered to a sample of 236 participants as runners at philanthropic road-running events. All hypotheses are tested using Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) and structural equation modeling (SEM)–Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) with a bootstrapping technique.

The results reveal that perceived business practice CSR moderates the relationship between extrinsic motivation and organizational identification and then influences the mediating effect of organizational identification on the relationship between extrinsic motivation and participation loyalty. This highlights the important role of perceived business practice CSR to participants' attitude and behavior when supporting philanthropic road-running events.

This research scrutinizes the role of perceived business practice CSR on philanthropic road-running events through an empirical study and resultant evidence. One recommendation is that when a firm intends to host a philanthropic road-running event, the firm must implement the reality of sound CSR in the firm's business practice.

Using a cross-cultural perspective, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of cultural difference and travel motivation on event participation and how cultural difference may influence the relationship between travel motivation and event participation. The paper highlights the importance of culture in tourism research.

The research was conducted by using a secondary data set (n=24,692) commissioned by Destination Canada (formerly the Canadian Tourism Commission). Both descriptive statistics (e.g. frequency analysis) and inferential statistics (e.g. hierarchical regressions) were calculated.

First of all, the results indicated that travel motivations and cultural difference can impact event participation. For example, those who were more motivated by knowledge and competence (e.g. knowing history and culture) were more likely to participate in art festivals and cultural events. Also, the research recognized that Asian-Canadians were more likely to visit ethnic or religious festivals than Anglo-Canadians, whereas Asian-Canadians were less likely to attend farmers’ market in comparison with Anglo-Canadians. Last, the effect of cultural difference can moderate the relationship between travel motivation and event participation.

These findings emphasize that travel motivations and cultural difference are key factors to be considered for festivals’ marketing. Particularly, the moderating effect of cultural difference reinforces that the important role played by culture for effective festival marketing should not be ignored. The research also provides valuable insights for destination managers who are interested in Asian markets. Moreover, using a secondary data set prepared by the Canadian Government largely increased the results’ representativeness, trustworthiness, and generalizability.