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The purpose of this paper was to provide a discussion on using sport events for community development through the lenses of community development theories and perceived event impacts.

The nature of the paper was not based on a specific methodology or design, rather on a review of relevant studies that aim to support strategies of how to develop a community through the hosting of sport events utilizing community development theories.

The review revealed that the profile of the community could influence the use of asset or needs-based community theory to achieve community development goals associated with hosting certain size of sport events.

The combination of community development theories with the literature in sport event impacts and legacies provides a novel approach to the discussion of community development through sport events.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the sources of inspiration for active participants in sport events, and the link between inspiration sources and event-related outcomes (i.e. life satisfaction and behavioral intentions).

Research questions were examined using a Greek (n=264) and a US (n=103) sample of participants of two small-scale running events. Content analysis was used to identify and code the themes of inspiration, while a multivariate analyses of variance was performed to test the inspiration group differences on life satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

The qualitative findings revealed three categories of inspiration source identified in each sample. The quantitative results showed that the interaction between inspiration source and event type had an overall effect on participants’ life satisfaction and future participation intention. Specifically, findings highlighted the different roles of inspiration on influencing life satisfaction and participation intention of short-distance (i.e. 5 and 10k) event participants than those of long-distance (i.e. marathon) runners.

This study identifies the sources of inspiration in small-scale sport events and provides preliminary empirical evidence where inspiration source and event type jointly influence participants’ life satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

Understanding the sources of inspiration provides event leveraging opportunities to inspire citizens to become more active in sports. Given that the sources of inspiration vary among different segments of event participants, event managers need to adopt differential communication and promotional activities geared to the needs of these targets.

The study provides the first empirical work exploring the sources of inspiration among active participants in small-scale sport events.

The purpose of this paper is to test the psychometric properties of the Team Brand Personality Scale by Blank et al. (2013, 2018) in the context of the professional football clubs in Greece, based on the perceptions of fans for their own team and the rival team. The brand personality team scores of the fans are also used to create a league map presenting the brand personality of the different teams of the Greek football Super League.

Following a quantitative research design, 724 Greek football fans completed an electronic questionnaire assessing demographics, brand personality, team identification, sport involvement, attitudinal loyalty and game attractiveness.

The results partially confirmed the psychometric properties of the brand personality scale and suggested that the notion of brand personality influences positively the attitudinal loyalty and game attractiveness of the fans. Based on the results, the personality structure for the football league was also created and discussed.

This study was set to focus only on the brand personality perceptions of the highly identified fans of football teams, known in the literature as realized brand personality. However, a thorough understanding of the particular concept requires also the perspective of sport marketers who may perceive the brand personality in a different manner (i.e. intended brand personality), so as to build a holistic picture of brand personality of football teams.

This research confirms that football teams have already projected a unique personality among their highly identified fans which can be used by marketing practitioners while designing integrated communication strategies.

This paper contributes to the broad brand personality literature by replicating Blank’s et al.’s sport team personality scale to the Greek context and the league level, involving both supporting fans and rivals.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how team identification and country influence professional baseball team spectators’ evaluations of service quality factors, perceived value and future behavioral intentions.

Data were collected online from sports consumers of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) in Taiwan (n = 600) and Major League Baseball in the USA (n = 460). A regression-based estimation method (PROCESS) and structural equation modeling approach were used to assess the relationships.

Both direct and indirect (via perceived value) effects of most service quality factors (schedule convenience, economic consideration, game amenities, ticket service and venue quality) on behavioral intentions are stronger for lowly than for highly identified CPBL fans. The indirect effect of home team on behavioral intentions is stronger for the lowly identified CPBL fans. The direct effect of game amenities and the indirect effect of venue quality (via perceived value) on behavioral intentions are stronger for the highly identified MLB fans. The indirect effect of opposing team and economic consideration is stronger for the lowly identified MLB fans. The positive relationship between venue quality and perceived value is stronger for the USA than for Taiwan fans. The relationships between game amenities and perceived value and between perceived value and behavioral intention are perceived to be invariant between fans from the two countries. Taiwan fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be directly and indirectly affected by service quality factors, whereas US fans’ behavioral intentions tend to be indirectly affected by service quality factors.

The study provides empirical evidence of the moderating role of team identification associated with the relationships between separate service quality factors, perceived value and behavioral intentions among consumers of a professional spectator sports in two different countries.

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.

Situational involvement (SI) and enduring involvement (EI) are important predictors of spectator sports tourist behaviours. For this study, onsite and web surveys were utilised to help understand how SI and EI levels, with both event and destination, may vary according to the primary and secondary trip purpose of a spectator sports tourist. Results revealed differences between the two groups only within certain aspects of SI and EI with the destination.

This study examines the impact of sport-induced emotions on spectators' purchase intentions towards event sponsors. Spectators who experience positive emotions evoked by a home team victory are found to exhibit stronger purchase intentions towards sponsors regardless of the sponsor's ability to improve spectator emotions. Those who experience negative emotions following home team defeat show heightened purchase intentions towards sponsors perceived capable of improving their negative feelings. Purchase intention decreases when sponsors cannot assist in upwardly managing the negative feelings of spectators. Theoretical and managerial implications for sponsors of spectator sports are provided.

The purpose of this study is to explore how event volunteers, athletes and onsite spectators perceive the impact of sport event sponsorship on future purchase intentions of the event sponsor brand.

The research problem was based on propositions by Novais and Arcodia (2013) and proposes relationships between sponsor–event fit, brand attitude, perceived brand quality and sponsor brand purchase intentions. Data were collected from 352 Greek sport event consumers from the 2013 Classic Marathon event, in Athens, Greece, using onsite surveys targeting non-sponsor brand consumer spectators, volunteers and athletes.

The results reveal that sponsor–event fit indirectly influenced sponsor brand purchase intentions via brand attitude and brand quality across all three groups. However, the fit did not directly influence perceived brand quality of the sponsor across all three groups and directly influenced purchase intentions of the athlete group.

Because of the duration of the event (one day), the sample sizes were not very large. In addition, the study was delimited on one sponsor from a single sport event. Therefore, the findings need to be tested with larger samples and additional sponsors and events to arrive to more robust conclusion about the purchase intention formation and its antecedents across multiple sport event consumer groups.

This study explores the power of sponsor–event fit among non-consumers of the sponsor brand and how the “interface” of event consumption through the lenses of three groups, namely, volunteer, spectator and athlete, influences brand attitude, perceived brand quality and sponsor brand purchase intentions.

This study aims to examine the current state of the research activities of scholars in the hospitality and tourism field by analyzing the first 20 years of the new millennium.

Longitudinal analyses using 14,229 journal articles as data source were realized by adopting BibExcel, Gephi and VOSviewer network analysis software packages.

This study provides a comprehensive overview of the hospitality and tourism research based on authorship and social network analysis, with patterns of prolific authors compared over four distinct periods.

The hospitality and tourism academic society is clearly illustrated by tracing academic publication activities across 20 years in the new millennium. In addition, this study provides a guide for scholars to search for multidisciplinary collaboration opportunities. Government agencies and non-governmental organisations can also benefit from this study by identifying appropriate review panel members when making decisions about hospitality- and tourism-related proposals.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use bibliometric analysis in assessing research published in leading hospitality and tourism journals across the four breakout periods in the new millennium.