PapersFlow Research Brief
Sport and Mega-Event Impacts
Research Guide
What is Sport and Mega-Event Impacts?
Sport and Mega-Event Impacts is the study of the economic, social, cultural, physical, and governance effects that major sport events (and related event tourism) produce for host destinations, stakeholders, and communities.
Sport and Mega-Event Impacts research sits at the intersection of event tourism, destination management, and impact evaluation, drawing on foundational work such as Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007) and Mathieson and Wall’s "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982). The provided topic corpus contains 110,010 works, indicating a large and mature research area, while a 5-year growth rate is not available in the provided data (Growth (5yr): N/A). Core subthemes include tourist motivations (Crompton’s "Motivations for pleasure vacation" (1979)), destination image formation (Beerli Palacio and Martín’s "Factors influencing destination image" (2004) and Gallarza et al.’s "Destination image" (2002)), and community planning and governance (Jamal and Getz’s "Collaboration theory and community tourism planning" (1995)).
Research Sub-Topics
Economic Impacts of Olympic Games Hosting
Researchers quantify cost-benefit analyses, multiplier effects, and displacement costs of Olympic infrastructure investments. Longitudinal studies track post-event fiscal sustainability.
Social Legacies of FIFA World Cup Events
This sub-topic evaluates community cohesion, displacement, and identity formation from World Cup preparations. Studies include resident perceptions and social capital metrics.
Destination Image Formation through Sport Mega-Events
Investigations model how media coverage and visitor experiences shape long-term tourism branding. Research applies structural equation modeling to image attributes.
Tourist Motivations for Event Sport Tourism
Studies segment motivations like escapism, prestige, and fandom using push-pull frameworks. Empirical work surveys attendees at major championships.
Stakeholder Collaboration in Mega-Event Planning
This area analyzes governance networks among governments, corporations, and communities in event delivery. Case studies apply collaboration theory to conflict resolution.
Why It Matters
Host governments and organizing committees routinely justify mega-event bids using claims about visitor spending, destination branding, and long-run “legacy” benefits; the applied value of Sport and Mega-Event Impacts research is to test those claims with defensible concepts and methods. Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007) provides a field-level framing for treating events as a tourism system (not just a one-off spectacle), which is directly relevant to designing evaluation plans that separate event-time effects from longer-run destination changes. Mathieson and Wall’s "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982) supplies a practical impact taxonomy (economic, physical, social) that maps cleanly onto contemporary mega-event evaluation questions (e.g., what changes are financial versus infrastructural versus community-level). On the demand side, Crompton’s "Motivations for pleasure vacation" (1979) supports the applied task of segmenting visitors and distinguishing “event-driven” travel from trips that would have occurred anyway, while Beerli Palacio and Martín’s "Factors influencing destination image" (2004) and Gallarza et al.’s "Destination image" (2002) anchor the real-world problem of whether hosting changes how a place is perceived. For governance and implementation, Jamal and Getz’s "Collaboration theory and community tourism planning" (1995) matters because mega-events require coordinated planning across public agencies, tourism bodies, and community stakeholders; poor collaboration can convert promised benefits into contested outcomes. In short, this literature is used to design bid appraisal, build monitoring frameworks, and interpret post-event evaluations in ways that reduce over-claiming and clarify who benefits, how, and under what conditions.
Reading Guide
Where to Start
Start with Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007) because it defines event tourism, situates events within tourism research, and provides a scaffold for organizing impact questions before selecting methods.
Key Papers Explained
Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007) provides the core field framing for studying events as tourism phenomena and for defining what “impact” questions belong in scope. Mathieson and Wall’s "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982) complements this by offering a durable impact taxonomy that can be used to structure evaluation designs and reporting. On the demand and perception side, Crompton’s "Motivations for pleasure vacation" (1979) supports reasoning about event-induced travel, while Beerli Palacio and Martín’s "Factors influencing destination image" (2004) and Gallarza et al.’s "Destination image" (2002) connect hosting to perceived place attributes. For governance and implementation, Jamal and Getz’s "Collaboration theory and community tourism planning" (1995) explains how stakeholder coordination shapes both process legitimacy and outcomes, and the "Routledge Handbook of Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise" (2016) provides methodological guidance for studying community experience and stakeholder claims that are often central to mega-event debates.
Paper Timeline
Most-cited paper highlighted in red. Papers ordered chronologically.
Advanced Directions
Advanced work tends to combine (1) system-level definitions of event tourism from "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007), (2) multi-domain impact accounting from "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982), and (3) theory-informed interpretation of demand, meaning, and perception using "Motivations for pleasure vacation" (1979), "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (2017), and "Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore" (1996). A current frontier is tighter integration of governance analysis—using "Collaboration theory and community tourism planning" (1995)—with destination image measurement frameworks from "Factors influencing destination image" (2004) and "Destination image" (2002), so that claims about “branding” and “legacy” can be traced to specific mechanisms and stakeholder decisions.
Papers at a Glance
| # | Paper | Year | Venue | Citations | Open Access |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Theory of the Leisure Class | 2017 | Oxford University Pres... | 4.9K | ✕ |
| 2 | Motivations for pleasure vacation | 1979 | Annals of Tourism Rese... | 3.4K | ✕ |
| 3 | Factors influencing destination image | 2004 | Annals of Tourism Rese... | 2.4K | ✓ |
| 4 | Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore | 1996 | American Sociological ... | 2.3K | ✕ |
| 5 | Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research | 2007 | Tourism Management | 2.1K | ✕ |
| 6 | Routledge Handbook of Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise | 2016 | — | 2.0K | ✕ |
| 7 | Towards a structural model of the tourist experience: an illus... | 2003 | Tourism Management | 1.7K | ✕ |
| 8 | Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts | 1982 | Medical Entomology and... | 1.6K | ✕ |
| 9 | Collaboration theory and community tourism planning | 1995 | Annals of Tourism Rese... | 1.6K | ✓ |
| 10 | Destination image | 2002 | Annals of Tourism Rese... | 1.6K | ✕ |
In the News
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International Handbook on the Economics of Mega Sporting Events
This book provides an up-to-date analysis of the financing and economic impact of mega sporting events, as well as a full discussion of how host cities can maximize the benefits from their experien...
Old questions, new methods: Revisiting the economic effects of hosting mega-sport events
their overall impact on economic activity remains inconclusive, largely due to methodological challenges. This study analyses the economic impact of the two largest mega-sport events, the Summer O...
Economic Impact, Fiscal Loss, and Redistribution of Wealth in Sport Events
This conceptual paper identifies erroneous economic impact reports as the first link in a chain reaction that can lead local governments to provide public subsidies to sport events. Using public fi...
Code & Tools
## Repository files navigation # Meta-Event-Impact-Assessment-Model-MEIAM- The "pink Night" Festival Revisited: Meta-Events and the Role of Desti...
The Economic Impact Assessment Tool (EIAT) allows users to estimate the impact of an investment activity in a region (Local Government Area) in ter...
Having trouble with Pages? Check out our documentation or contact support and we’ll help you sort it out. ## About a framework for reproducible e...
As the field of sports analytics evolve, there's a growing need for methods to both track and visualize players throughout the game. This package a...
This note (and it should be regarded as a note, not an issue) marks implementations that use explicit, i.e. manual, event delegation. The note is s...
Recent Preprints
Mega-Events: The effect of the world's biggest sporting ...
review of the existing literature in the field. The paper describes why boosters’ ex ante estimates of the economic impact of large sporting events tend to exaggerate the net economic benefits of ...
Meta-evaluation of the impacts and legacy of the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games / Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
tangible and intangible effects, and intended and (positive and negative) unintended effects. Report 1: Scope, research questions and data strategy. - Report 2: Methods. - Report 3: Baseline and co...
Green and resilient hotel operations through mega-event ...
Mega-events such as the Olympic Games, World Cup, and World Expo aim to leave sustainability legacies, yet the mechanisms through which these goals are realized in hotel operations remain underexpl...
I asked AI Are there any peer reviewed evidence based ...
Meta © 2025
Does hosting a mega-event like the Olympics or FIFA ...
Hosting international mega-events such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup has become a high-profile policy for countries to market their global image, spur domestic investment, and showcase...
Latest Developments
Recent research in 2025-2026 highlights that mega-sporting events continue to have complex impacts, including economic benefits, environmental costs such as carbon emissions during preparation, and challenges related to climate change, with studies emphasizing the need for sustainable strategies and assessing long-term legacy effects (phys.org, frontiers, growthlab).
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as a “sport mega-event” impact in research terms?
In this literature, impacts are typically framed as economic, physical, and social effects on the host destination, consistent with Mathieson and Wall’s "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982). Event-focused tourism research also treats impacts as part of an event tourism system rather than a single event-time shock, aligning with Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007).
How do researchers distinguish tourism impacts from general destination change?
A common approach is to model events within broader destination systems and then ask which observed changes plausibly stem from event-related travel and spending, as emphasized conceptually in Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007). Researchers also use motivation-based reasoning to separate trips primarily triggered by the event from trips driven by other push–pull factors, drawing on Crompton’s "Motivations for pleasure vacation" (1979).
Which theories are most used to explain who attends and why?
Tourist motivation is classically grounded in Crompton’s "Motivations for pleasure vacation" (1979), which is frequently used to classify reasons for leisure travel that can be adapted to event attendance. For cultural consumption and status-related participation, Veblen’s "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (2017) and Peterson and Kern’s "Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore" (1996) are commonly used to interpret how taste, distinction, and participation patterns shape event demand and meaning-making.
How is destination image linked to mega-events and sport tourism?
Destination image is treated as a multidimensional construct shaped by multiple factors, as formalized in Beerli Palacio and Martín’s "Factors influencing destination image" (2004). Syntheses such as Gallarza et al.’s "Destination image" (2002) provide a structured way to interpret whether event hosting plausibly shifts perceptions, which is often a core justification in mega-event bidding and marketing.
Which governance and planning models are used for assessing community-level effects?
Jamal and Getz’s "Collaboration theory and community tourism planning" (1995) is a key reference for analyzing how stakeholder collaboration affects planning quality and community outcomes in tourism and event settings. This perspective is often used to evaluate whether the distribution of costs and benefits reflects inclusive planning or narrow interests.
Which research methods are commonly used to study sport and mega-event impacts?
Qualitative designs are widely used to study lived experience, stakeholder narratives, and community meaning, with methodological guidance consolidated in the "Routledge Handbook of Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise" (2016). Quantitative and model-based approaches are frequently organized around structured impact categories (economic/physical/social) as laid out in Mathieson and Wall’s "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982) and system-level event tourism framing in Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007).
Open Research Questions
- ? Which combinations of economic, physical, and social indicators best capture mega-event “net impacts” when evaluated as a tourism system rather than a one-time demand surge, consistent with the conceptual framing in "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" (2007) and "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982)?
- ? How can motivation-based segmentation grounded in "Motivations for pleasure vacation" (1979) be operationalized to estimate the share of attendees whose trips are truly event-induced versus displaced or time-shifted tourism?
- ? Which destination-image dimensions emphasized in "Factors influencing destination image" (2004) and synthesized in "Destination image" (2002) are most sensitive to sport mega-events, and which are largely unaffected by hosting?
- ? Under what governance conditions described in "Collaboration theory and community tourism planning" (1995) do mega-event planning coalitions produce broadly shared benefits rather than concentrated gains?
- ? How should qualitative evidence standards from the "Routledge Handbook of Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise" (2016) be applied to reconcile conflicting stakeholder narratives about mega-event legacy?
Recent Trends
The provided data indicate a very large research base (110,010 works) but do not provide a 5-year growth rate (Growth (5yr): N/A).
Within the highly cited foundation, sustained attention remains on event tourism as a definitional and programmatic research area (Getz’s "Event tourism: Definition, evolution, and research" ; 2,101 citations) and on classifying impacts across economic, physical, and social domains (Mathieson and Wall’s "Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts" (1982); 1,606 citations).
2007The prominence of destination image research—Beerli Palacio and Martín’s "Factors influencing destination image" ; 2,361 citations, and Gallarza et al.’s "Destination image" (2002); 1,565 citations—signals continuing interest in whether hosting affects perceptions, not only spending.
2004The continued high citation of social-theory work on status and cultural consumption—Veblen’s "The Theory of the Leisure Class" ; 4,923 citations, and Peterson and Kern’s "Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore" (1996); 2,320 citations—suggests that researchers still interpret sport-event participation and legacy debates through broader theories of distinction, taste, and social change.
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