Innovative Sustainable Tourism Development and Entrepreneurship through Sports Events

Georgios Tsekouropoulos, Ourania Gkouna, Dimitrios Theocharis and Athanasios Gounas
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Georgios Tsekouropoulos: Department of Organisation Management, Marketing & Tourism, International Hellenic University, 57400 Thessaloniki, Greece
Ourania Gkouna: Department of Organisation Management, Marketing & Tourism, International Hellenic University, 57400 Thessaloniki, Greece
Dimitrios Theocharis: Department of Organisation Management, Marketing & Tourism, International Hellenic University, 57400 Thessaloniki, Greece
Athanasios Gounas: Department of Organisation Management, Marketing & Tourism, International Hellenic University, 57400 Thessaloniki, Greece

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-14

Abstract: Innovation and the development of new services are important strategic features to ensure the growth and sustainable wealth for industries where customers have many choices, as is the case in tourism sector. In this context, the present research comes to connect the local sustainable tourism development with the sporting events, and to come up with relevant proposals for the reference area, but also for their generalization in the whole tourist areas. Based on the research purpose, a quantitative research was conducted on a sample of 448 residents, randomly selected from a sampling frame. Several scales from previous studies were used to collect primary data, and they were adapted according to the research purpose. Research findings indicate that the acceptance of sustainable tourism development through sports can be predicted by several variables, such as the economic impact (b = 0.343), residents’ attitude towards sports events (b = 0.287), and citizens’ tendency to entrepreneurship (b = 0.113). Additionally, sports events affect the tendency of citizens towards entrepreneurship (r = 0.519, p < 0.01). In conclusion, the impact of sports events is multiple, and it affects many aspects of a tourism destination, and the effect of sports events on the destination is connected with the tendency of citizens towards entrepreneurship related to sports events.

Keywords: sustainable tourism development; entrepreneurship; innovation; sports events (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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