The Inspirational Effect ofMajor Sporting Events onAttenders’ Attitudes andBehaviours

Abstract

Background \nThe inspiration effect of attending major sporting events has become a highly \nresearched area, leading on from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic \nGames’ ‘inspire a generation’ objective, but has been largely limited to \nmeasuring ‘intention’ to change behaviour in terms of sport and physical \nactivity participation of attenders aged 26 and over rather than its impact on \nyounger attenders. \nBy adopting the EBIC Model (TTM + TPB), this study aims to address this \nneed by contributing towards testing the inspirational effect of attending the \n2018 Women’s Hockey World Cup, through the measuring of both the \nintangible (intention and attitude) and tangible (behaviour change) outcomes. \nIt also examined the leveraging strategies implemented by event stakeholders \nto increase sport and physical activity participation. \nMethods \nA mixture of self-administered 454 questionnaires (407 event-based and 47 \npost-event) and phone interviews were used. The event-based questionnaire \nenabled the collection of both pre and during-event data, and interviews with \nthe event stakeholders (three members of the England Hockey events team \nand one from UK Sport), the leveraging of the event. Email exchanges \nbetween these members providing additional evidence, helped to further \ncomplement data from interviews. \nResults/Findings \nResults showed the inspiration effect to be prevalent amongst the younger \ndemographic (16-25) and that there are facilitating and mitigating factors which \nsignificantly affect sport and physical activity participation. Of the attenders in \nthe event-based sample, 84.5 percent were already active, with no significant \nchanges in sport and physical activity participation being found. Any changes \nin behaviour were attributed to those who were already active. Leveraging \nstrategies were present pre, during and post-event, however most of the \nv \nattenders in the sample reported to having not experienced any of these \nimplemented strategies. \nConclusions \nAttending a major sporting event can contribute, and thus act as a catalyst to \nincrease sport and physical activity participation. However, this change in \nbehaviour was not shown to be significant and was attributed predominantly \nto attenders who were already active. This PhD study contributed towards the \ntesting of the inspirational effect of attending major sporting events in the UK, \nby measuring the attitude and behaviour change in attendees.