The Inspirational Effect of Major Sporting Events on Attenders’ Attitudes and Behaviours

Background The inspiration effect of attending major sporting events has become a highly researched area, leading on from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games’ ‘inspire a generation’ objective, but has been largely limited to measuring ‘intention’ to change behaviour in terms of sport and physical activity participation of attenders aged 26 and over rather than its impact on younger attenders. By adopting the EBIC Model (TTM + TPB), this study aims to address this need by contributing towards testing the inspirational effect of attending the 2018 Women’s Hockey World Cup, through the measuring of both the intangible (intention and attitude) and tangible (behaviour change) outcomes. It also examined the leveraging strategies implemented by event stakeholders to increase sport and physical activity participation. Methods A mixture of self-administered 454 questionnaires (407 event-based and 47 post-event) and phone interviews were used. The event-based questionnaire enabled the collection of both pre and during-event data, and interviews with the event stakeholders (three members of the England Hockey events team and one from UK Sport), the leveraging of the event. Email exchanges between these members providing additional evidence, helped to further complement data from interviews. Results/Findings Results showed the inspiration effect to be prevalent amongst the younger demographic (16-25) and that there are facilitating and mitigating factors which significantly affect sport and physical activity participation. Of the attenders in the event-based sample, 84.5 percent were already active, with no significant changes in sport and physical activity participation being found. Any changes in behaviour were attributed to those who were already active. Leveraging strategies were present pre, during and post-event, however most of the v attenders in the sample reported to having not experienced any of these implemented strategies. Conclusions Attending a major sporting event can contribute, and thus act as a catalyst to increase sport and physical activity participation. However, this change in behaviour was not shown to be significant and was attributed predominantly to attenders who were already active. This PhD study contributed towards the testing of the inspirational effect of attending major sporting events in the UK, by measuring the attitude and behaviour change in attendees.