Comparing Expenditure Patterns and Travel Characteristics Among NFL Fans with Different Levels of Team Identification

CHENGMING HU ^[1] ; Cole, Shu ^[1]
1. [1] Indiana University Bloomington
  
  Indiana University Bloomington
  
  Township of Bloomington, Estados Unidos
Localización: Tourism review international, ISSN 1544-2721, Vol. 20, Nº. 1, 2016, págs. 3-10
Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
- Sport tourism is one of the more rapidly developing leisure activities worldwide, and is widely discussed in literature of the field. The anticipated economic impact generated from tourists in sport events is a key motivation for hosting them. Investigation of psychological and sociodemographic factors that enhance sport tourist expenditure can enhance our overall understanding of sport tourist consumptive and travel behaviors for industry and research purposes. As fans' team identification has been identified as a major motivation for attending sport events, the sampling in this study consists of sport tourists attending the 2012 Super Bowl who were divided into two groups based on the levels of team identification: fans of 2012 Super Bowl NFL teams and fans of other, non-2012 Super Bowl NFL teams. The results indicate that these two Super Bowl tourist segments have significantly different expenditure patterns on food and beverage, shopping, local transportation, and entertainment. They also differ greatly on travel characteristics such as party size, travel length, and numbers of previous visits. Applying team identification as a variable to analyze sport tourists' expenditure patterns and travel characteristics can thus help event marketers and local tourism stakeholders to design effective marketing strategies for mega-sport events and local tourist attractions both on and off season.