Longing for the Victory of South Korean National Football Team: Sport Tourists to a Football Museum

Abstract

To attract nostalgic sport tourists, sporting destinations should understand antecedents of tourists' word of mouth (WOM). Thus, this study investigated structural relationships among perceived value, satisfaction, place attachment, and WOM while examining the mediating roles of satisfaction and place attachment among nostalgic sport tourists. Data were collected from 282 visitors to the Football Museum in Suwon City, South Korea. Construct validity of the measurement scale was verified by high-order confirmatory factor analysis, factor loadings, average variance extracted, construct reliability, and correlation analyses. Cronbach's alpha analyses were conducted to ensure reliability of the measurement scale. A structural equation modeling analysis with maximum likelihood estimation was executed to examine relationships among the variables in the specified model using the responses of 282 participants. The results revealed positive impacts of (a) perceived value on satisfaction and WOM and (b) satisfaction on WOM and place attachment, and demonstrated (c) a partial mediating impact of satisfaction on the relationship between perceived value and WOM. Place attachment was not found to influence WOM or mediate the relationship between satisfaction and WOM. The findings of this study provide additional supporting evidence of the positive relationship between satisfaction and place attachment, whose relationship has been debated in tourism literature. Moreover, the results revealed a partial mediating effect of satisfaction on the relation between perceived value and WOM among football museum visitors. Contrary to previous findings, this study did not find a significant impact of place attachment on WOM; thus, satisfaction was not found to affect WOM via place attachment.