The Social Impact Of Major Sport Events From The Host Residents’ Cognitions Perspective

Researchers around the world have been increasingly interested in social impact of major sports events. Based on presenting related references, this article discusses social impacts of major sports events through longitude studies, with Leshan stage of Tour of China as study object, from residents’ viewpoint. Firstly, the social impacts scale was developed based on residents’ perceptions. Afterward, this scale was used to measure local residents’ perceptions of Tour of China and the changes and to predict residents’ willingness to host evens in the future by identifying different perceptions.Researchers now have been paying more and more attention to attitude and perceptions of in host city residents, the foremost stakeholders of sports events. These 2 factors play vital parts in sustainable development of sports events in host city as well as interactions between sparts events and host city. This research is beneficial to analyze social impacts of Leshan stage of Tour of China. Residents’ perceptions were measured by pre and post event longitude study designs, generating 411 and 380 valid questionnaires. Factor matrix was established through exploratory factor analysis. Difference analysis was used to study whether the residents’ perceptions changed over time. Meanwhile, correlations among residents’ willingness to host Tour of China in the future, factor-social impacts and variate-population was evaluated by binary logistic regression analysis. Main results are as below:Firstly, residents cared about the positive and negative influence in their individual life brought by hosting sports events. Residents of Leshan had explicit perceptions towards the social impacts generated by hosting Leshan stage of Tout of China. Which can be measured by 8 aspects: cultural communications and social invests, public sports service, improved city image, rise in price and excessive spending, public facilities constructions and city promotion, social disorder, traffic block, environment problems.Secondly, residents’ perceptions changed over time. Before the event, the most highly perceived benefit and cost were ‘cultural communications and social invests’, ‘blocked traffic’. However, according to the post event research, the most highly perceived benefit turned to be ‘improved city image’, while the most negative impact perceived stayed to be ‘traffic block’.Thirdly, with the host of event, residents’ perceptions towards whether to host this event in the future changed over time. Residents’ perceptions of social impacts could influence their willingness to host Tour of China in the future. The 2 positive factors: ‘public sports service’ and ‘public facilities constructions and city promotion’ are very significant in affecting residents’ willingness. Another positive factor changed from ‘improved city image’ to ‘cultural communication and social invests’ from before to after event. Meanwhile, the negative factors turned from ‘social disorder’(pre event) to ‘rise in price and excessive spending’(post event). The characteristic variable-social population is of no statistical significance in analysis and it is not influence factor of residents’ willingness to host Tour of China in the future.