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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sport, Leisure, Tourism, and Events
Volume 5 - 2023 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2023.1211432

Tourist Characteristics Affecting Loyalty in College Football: A Comparison between Passive and Nostalgic

Provisionally accepted
Jae Han Min Jae Han Min 1*Hyo J. Chang Hyo J. Chang 2Joo L. Son Joo L. Son 1
  • 1 National Institute of Agricultural Science (South Korea), Wanju, Republic of Korea
  • 2 Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Understanding the sports tourist types and their behaviors helps sports organizers cater to the needs of these tourists during the sports event planning and management process. To do that, this paper is designed to investigate the travel characteristics of two primary types of sports tourists: passive and nostalgic sports tourists. Also, this paper examines team identification, player identification, and perceived team performance of these tourists and how these internal factors affect their team and destination loyalty. The results indicate that perceived team performance is a significant predictor of loyalty toward the destination and team for nostalgic sports tourists. Our findings suggest that sports tourism events need to be customized to better serve sports tourists based on their characteristics (i.e., passive and nostalgic) and the sports marketers should come up with appropriate marketing strategies to attract the destination they travel to for future game attendance.

    Keywords: sports tourist types, college football, sports tourism, Team perceptions, Team loyalty, destination loyalty

    Received: 27 Apr 2023; Accepted: 07 Jul 2023.

    Copyright: © 2023 Min, Chang and Son. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jae Han Min, National Institute of Agricultural Science (South Korea), Wanju, Republic of Korea

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.