Abstract
China has entered into a new developmental phase where the government can promote national fitness, the sports industry, and city tourism, simultaneously. Rapidly becoming the largest single sporting events in China, marathon events help facilitate this integration. However, event organizers tend to focus on winning bids for events instead of improving event services and increasing the loyalty of runners to the host city, which could benefit the city for sustainable development. In this study, the antecedents affecting marathon runner loyalty to the city hosting the annual hallmark event (i.e., destination loyalty) were investigated by studying a sample of 392 repeat runners during a recent HengQin International Marathon (HQ-M). Conducting structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses, the proposed model, integrating event service quality (ESQ), destination image (DI), satisfaction (SAT), and destination loyalty (DLOY), was confirmed. Nine hypothesized paths were identified among these four constructs, including six direct paths and three indirect paths. Meanwhile, mediation effects and serial mediation effects of DI and SAT between ESQ and DLOY were found. Good ESQ, positive DI, and high SAT were found both separately and collectively to enhance DLOY and have important implications for the strategic marketing of sporting events and sustaining city brand image.
Highlights
The findings extend a common understanding of the relationship between sport event marketing and city marketing in four ways
Repeat runners and first-time participants were distinguished and focused on the former in the 2019 HengQin International Marathon (HQ-M), for active sport tourists are to some extent different from passive sports tourists in attitude and behavior [15]
Using an exclusive sample of repeat runners, how the constructs of event service quality (ESQ), destination image (DI), and SAT might predict destination loyalty (DLOY) behavior was investigated. While some scholars, such as Jeong et al [14], have collected data from spectators and runners at city marathons to examine the relationship between event quality and DLOY, none have examined the determinants of DLOY among repeat participants in the context of sport event marketing and city marketing
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. After the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China entered a new stage where the government began promoting national fitness [1], the sports industry [2], and city tourism [3], simultaneously. Since 2014, the Chinese government has successively enacted more than 18 policies to include the sports industry as a part of the efforts of transforming and upgrading the national economy. In 2016, the State Council of China released an outline for “Healthy China 2030,” an initiative to promote health among all citizens [4]. Since 2018, the Chinese government has proposed strategies for promoting three major regions: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, Yangtze River Economic Belt, and Guangdong-Hong
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