Abstract
Mass sport participation has received considerable attention in the recent sport management literature. However, little is known about sport spectatorship as an outcome of sports mega-events (SMEs). This is the first study to use cross-cultural analysis to examine the relationship between the 2002 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup Korea/Japan and current football spectatorship in the host countries. In the context of SMEs, this study uses the psychological construct of nostalgia as a mediator to identify the relationship with spectatorship. Data from 416 and 408 respondents from South Korea and Japan, respectively, were collected through online surveys and analysed cross-culturally using Hayes’ PROCESS macro model 4. We find that the nostalgia evoked by the 2002 World Cup has positively influenced the host nations’ current football spectatorship. While this SME has a strong impact on evoking nostalgia, the effect of nostalgia on spectator behaviour is significant, yet comparatively weak.
Highlights
In the host nations of sports mega-events (SMEs), such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup or the Olympic Games, mass sport participation has been seen as an intangible and sustainable outcome of SMEs [1,2]
Since the leisure nostalgia scale (LNS) is a multidimensional construct composed of five factors, this study identifies the manner in which spectators’ behaviour changes with each factor, and how each nostalgia factor acts as a mediator between past experience and present sport spectatorship
All respondents were adult males who were over 19 years of age in 2002. Samples from those who were below 19 years of age in 2002 were not included in this study, as the sport consumption behaviour of juniors is believed to lead to different motives, attitudes, and behavioural outcomes, compared with that of adults, mainly because many spectators who were under 19 years of age in 2002 might have been in different environments at the time of the 2002 World Cup, which, we presume, might mean that the way in which they reacted to the World Cup might have been different from adults
Summary
In the host nations of sports mega-events (SMEs), such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup or the Olympic Games, mass sport participation has been seen as an intangible and sustainable outcome of SMEs [1,2]. The extant literature on sport spectatorship mainly focuses on spectators’ motivations, such as why fans watch/attend sport events [20,21]. These motivations are commonly segmented by psychological, emotional, social, or environmental variables.
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