Fandom and risk perceptions of Olympic tourists

Abstract

Perceptions that travel to globally high profile events and destinations can be a risky activity has become more prevalent in recent years in response to various disastrous global incidents; some linked to major sports events such as the terrorist attacks at the Boston Marathon in April 2013 or at the Stade de France stadium in Paris in November 2015. In this current climate of perceived risk and uncertainty surrounding travel, and with specific relevance to mega sport events, this research note reviews the risk perceptions of Olympic tourists who travelled to Brazil for the 2016 Rio Games. Weed (2008:22) defines Olympic tourism as "tourism behaviour motivated or generated by Olympic-related activities". This note explores the construct of Olympic 'fandom', that is the Olympic tourist's attachment to and selfidentification with the games (Kirkup, 2012). Fandom is explored in terms of its influence on risk perceptions and worry, towards the threat of terrorism, crime, and the Zika Virus. We determine with whom Olympic tourists place their trust, (event versus host destination), in terms of ensuring their safety and security, which may in turn also inform thinking on the nature of individual resilience in the future.

Building resilience and managing crises and disasters in sport tourism

“…Secondly, and partially aligned to this previous observation, in terms of vulnerability to natural disasters, differing regions and host countries will be subject to variances in types, forms and frequency of natural hazards, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones and/or tsunamis (see Miles, Gordon and Bang, 2017). Similarly, as the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games highlighted with the zika virus, there are differing vulnerabilities to health hazards and communicable diseases (see Walters, Shipway, Miles and Aldrigui, 2017).…”

“…Thirdly, it has also been previously identified that spectator perspectives on safety and security also feature in the attitudes of spectators on where to travel and when to attend (George and Swart, 2015;Taylor and Toohey, 2007;Qi, Gibson and Zhang, 2009;Walters et al, 2017). I would suggest that this relatively limited body of work would certainly merit a more comprehensive investigation in future years.…”

“…Taking a broader holistic overview, additional potential future research themes should also include studies linked to social, community and individual sport tourism resilience perspectives; an extension of current work on crowd management and control at major sports events and the development of an expanded body of knowledge on fandom and resilience studies; more extensive explorations on crisis communication, culpability and litigation in sport tourism organisations; and additional studies on the risk perceptions of sport tourists that continues to build on the previous work of Qi, Gibson and Zhang (2009), George and Swart (2015), and Walters et al, (2017). Not only is there a pressing interdisciplinary research agenda waiting to be further developed, but there are also notable practical implications to enable sport tourism events to more effectively handle crisis and disasters in the future.…”

Bouncing Back and Jumping Forward: Scoping the Resilience Landscape of International Sports Events And Implications for Events and Festivals

“…In terms of vulnerability to natural disasters, differing regions and host countries are subject to variances in types, forms, and frequency of natural hazards, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, and/or tsunamis (see Miles, Gordon, & Bang, 2017). Additionally, as the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games highlighted with the zika virus, there are differing vulnerabilities to health hazards and even communicable diseases (Shipway, 2018;Walters, Shipway, Miles, & Aldrigui, 2017). Moreover, in the developing world, man-made threats and risks such as crime rates, kidnapping, insurgencies, terrorism, or conflict may be more notable.…”

A taxonomy of event participants based on risk and security perceptions

“…Roehl and Fesenmaier, 1992;Floyd and Pennington-Gray, 2004;Dolnicar, 2005) and food (Mitchell and Boustani, 2015), but research in events is very limited and restricted to risk perceptions (e.g. Saadat et al, 2010;Schroeder et al, 2013;Walters et al, 2017). The purpose of this research was therefore to create a taxonomy of event participants based on risk and security perceptions.…”