Spatio-Temporal Network Analysis of the Impact of Mega Event-Based Development: The 2018 Winter Olympic Host City (Gangneung, South Korea) Case

Abstract

Background and objective: Although mega-events are generally expected to have both short-and long-term lasting favorable effects on host cities, few quantitative studies have investigated this impact based on demand-oriented evidences and through a phased data collection. This study examines the case of Gangneung, a Winter Olympic host city, in order to identify the extent to which the effects of the Olympics are durable.Methods: City map survey was conducted 48 times for 527 visitors for a year and half for visitation pattern observation. In order to investigate the temporal impact of the Olympic event and seasonality, attraction visitation network for seven periods are compared based on using Network density comparison analysis. In addition, a regression analysis-a QAP (Quadratic Assignment Procedure) was followed to examine different factors affecting network formation.Results: As the Winter Olympics were taking place mainly around the Olympic Park, the visitation network results displayed very strong connections among the Olympic park, the Northern coast, and the Southern city’s downtown. However, except the major connections, all other connecting strengths were presented with noticeably weaker strengths when compared to the pre-Olympic period. After the Olympics, the edge strengths were restored to levels similar to those of the pre-Olympic period and, the most noticeable change was the reduced gap between the strongest and weakest attraction group, indicating that the edge strengths tend to distribute equally. Another change was that the strengths of connections to the Olympic Park became stronger, indicating that the Olympic legacy was included as one of the touristic attractions. The results of the following season indicated that the connections among the Northern and Eastern coasts, the Western historical sites, and the Southern downtown area remained strong and connections to the downtown became more prominent with new powerful attraction points.Conclusion: The longitudinal observations revealed that there is a noticeable durable impact of hosting the Olympics. To some extent, Olympic hosting and the KTX railway construction seem to have changed tourist visitation patterns. Although the results warn that the expectation of spillover and durable effect can be hasty, the following results imply that the redevelopment project induced by a mega event has brought the changes and reorganized the travel pattern in small city. This also provides evidence that mega-event impact sometimes lags behind the city government and local community’s schedule, which explains the need for a long-term evaluation.