Sport & Tourism: A Reader

Mike Weed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415426879
• eBook ISBN: 9781134090969
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Hostelería, viajes y turismo

This Reader provides comprehensive coverage of the scholarly literature in sports tourism. Divided into four parts, each prefaced by a substantial introduction from the editor, it presents the key themes, state of the art research and new conceptual thinking in sports tourism studies. Topics covered include:

• understanding the sports tourist
• impacts of sports tourism
• policy and management considerations for sports tourism
• approaches to research in sports tourism

Articles cover a broad range of the new research that has a bearing on sports tourism and include diverse areas such as the economic analysis of sports events, sub-cultures in sports tourism, adventure tourism and tourism policy.

PART ONE

Sport & Tourism research approaches

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

AS NOTED IN THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION , the structure and impetus for this Reader was provided by the special issue of European Sport Management Quarterly published in 2005 on ‘Sports Tourism Theory and Method’. In my Editorial Introduction to the special issue (the first chapter in this Part), I drew on an analogy used by Bernard Forscher in 1963 to highlight what he saw as a significant problem in the construction of social science knowledge. Forscher was concerned that too many studies (‘bricks’) were being randomly produced, thus contributing to haphazard piles of research that did little to build coherent bodies of knowledge (‘edifices’). This analogy has been used by a number of authors (e.g. Biddle, 2006; Weed, 2005) to discuss the nature and potential of research synthesis approaches in various disciplines in sport. In presenting a number of chapters that have, in one form or another, conducted syntheses or reviews of research in sport and tourism since 2000, this Part plays a useful introductory role in assessing the development of the body of knowledge in sport and tourism and the range of research approaches that have been used or suggested. As a collection, the chapters in this Part, spanning the years 2001 to 2006, demonstrate how research in sport and tourism has developed and progressed in recent years, while individually, the chapters each present a different perspective on the development of the subject.

The General Introduction to this Reader mentioned a number of reviews conducted before 2000, with two in particular (Gibson, 1998; Weed, 1999) providing a useful benchmark for the state of the field immediately prior to 2000. Also worthy of mention is an international review of the literature on sport and tourism commissioned by the Great Britain Sports Council in 1992. This review, conducted by Guy Jackson and Sue Glyptis, considered material largely related to impacts: the impact of sport in developing tourism, of tourism in developing sport, and the positive/negative economic/non-economic impacts of sports tourism. Jackson and Glyptis’ (1992) review was constrained by the limited number of works at that time that focused explicitly on sports tourism: ‘much of importance had to be extracted from more general studies, and those dealing with the sport or tourism sectors separately’ (1992: 14). Fortunately, this is no longer the case, although, as mentioned in the General Introduction, there are many useful works currently available that are relevant to the study of the relationship between sport and tourism, rather than being directly concerned with the relationship between sport and tourism.

A note on the Jackson and Glyptis (1992) report is useful here, as a comparison between this report and the chapters included in this Part highlights the way in which the field has developed. First, my systematic review of the field in the five years from 2000 to 2004 inclusive (see Chapter 6) returned eighty articles in refereed journals that focused on the relationship between sport and tourism, and this did not include the numerous chapters, books and conference papers also published in that period. As such, the volume of published work on sport and tourism has increased since the Jackson and Glyptis (1992) review but, more importantly, the volume of work meeting the quality standards of peer-reviewed journals has also increased. Second, the nature of the work included in this Part indicates a broadening of the field beyond the study of impacts, although impacts research still comprises a significant corpus of the work.

As such, research on behaviours, policy and provision also feature prominently in the reviews featured in this Part, as do commentaries on the way in which research in the field might develop in the future. In this respect, it might be expected that chapters featuring suggestions for the future development of the field would feature in a final or concluding part. However, as noted earlier, this material provides a useful context within which to understand the rest of the papers in the Reader. It is intended that this Part should outline the development of the field of sports tourism to date, establish the current ‘state of play’ and provide a range of visions for the development of the field in the future. This ‘map’ of past and present, and of potential routes in the future, therefore, provides a point of reference for the chapters in the remaining parts of this Reader on behaviours (Part Two), impacts (Part Three), provision and policy (Part Four), and how these papers are located within the overall body of knowledge relating to the study of sport and tourism.

The Editorial from the 2005 special issue of European Sport Management Quarterly (vol. 5, no. 3), entitled Sports Tourism Theory and Method: Concepts, Issues and Epistemologies is the ‘lead’ chapter in this Part and is written by myself, Mike Weed. In this paper I was concerned to highlight some of the problems that the study of sport and tourism faced, and which the special issue of ESMQ had been conceived to address. As an editorial introduction, this contains both personal views on the development of the field and some comments on contemporary debates. In particular, this chapter outlines my preference for a ‘conceptualisation’ of the area of sport and tourism (rather than a definition), and explains how Chris Bull and I came to develop our conceptualisation of the field as being derived from ‘the unique interaction of activity, people and place’ (Weed and Bull, 2004: 7). The chapter also explains how this conceptualisation leads to my preference for the term ‘sports tourism’, rather than the more commonly used ‘sport tourism’, to refer to the genre. Also included in the chapter are discussions about the need for a greater focus on explanations rather than descriptions in the research on sport and tourism, and for a more explicit and careful consideration of the application of the research methods from which knowledge about sport and tourism is derived.

Gibson’s (1998) ‘critical analysis of research’ in sport and tourism has already been highlighted as a useful benchmark for the state of the field immediately prior to the period covered by this Reader. In fact, in a keynote address to the Leisure Studies Association conference in 2001, Heather Gibson updated this review in a presentation entitled Sport Tourism at a Crossroad? Considerations for the Future, and this updated view, the second chapter in this Part, provides the earliest overview of the field presented here. This chapter, in contrast to my arguments in the previous paper, presents the case for the use of the term ‘sport tourism’, and suggests a definition that subdivides the area into ‘three distinct behavioural sets’:

Leisure-based travel that takes individuals temporarily outside of their home communities to participate in physical activities, to watch physical activities, or to venerate attractions associated with physical activities.

(Gibson, 1998: 49)

Gibson addressed the way in which the link between sport and tourism is considered by policy-makers, by researchers, and by those responsible for curriculum development. Her conclusions, in 2001, were that the clearest need was to bring together the bodies of knowledge relating to sport and to tourism in order to develop a body of knowledge relating to sport and tourism that would be conceptually grounded, thus sowing the seeds for critiques of the field — critiques that both Gibson and others have presented in more recent years (see Chapters 1, 5 and 6 in this Part).

One of the papers cited by Gibson in her 2001 review was an article published in the same year by Tom Hinch and James Higham entitled, Sport Tourism: A Framework for Research. This is the third chapter presented in this Part. Gibson suggested that the framework presented by Hinch and Higham ‘proffers a promising avenue for future research’. In fact, as my ESMQ editorial (Chapter 1) notes:

There have been a number of publications that have sought to define and classify the area, but it is only really the framework presented by Hinch and Higham (2001) and my own analysis with Chris Bull (Weed & Bull, 2004) that have offered any conceptualisation of the area . . . [I]n the absence of any other contributions to this fundamental aspect of debate within sports tourism, these two propositions are clear points of reference for future research in the field.

Hinch and Higham derive their framework for research in sport and tourism from the activity, spatial and temporal dimensions of the area. Sport is positioned as the activity dimension, while the temporal and spatial dimensions are derived from tourism. Nine illustrative rather than exhaustive themes are described, which combine via the three dimensions to suggest twenty-seven potential areas of investigation within sports tourism, thus providing a clear manifesto for future work.

The fourth chapter in this Part focuses on outdoor adventure tourism, an area that might be viewed as part of, or as overlapping with, the study of sport and tourism, depending on how the two areas are delineated. Also written in 2001, Karin Weber’s paper, Outdoor Adventure Tourism: A Review of Research Approaches argues for a greater focus on adventure experiences in the study of outdoor adventure tourism. Weber suggests that adventure tourism has traditionally been seen as an extension of adventure recreation and, consequently, the tourism element has been overlooked. As such, there are clear corollaries here with the study of sport and tourism that has also struggled, as Gibson notes (Chapter 2), to genuinely bring two bodies of knowledge together. In analyses of adventure tourism, Weber suggests that risk has been too narrowly conceived as physical risk, whereas psychological and social risk can be equally important in the adventure experience. In fact, Weber believes that adventure tourism can be conceptualised as being as much about the quest for insight and knowledge as the desire for elements of physical risk. Furthermore, Weber advocates a greater focus on interpretive qualitative methodologies in understanding adventure experiences, a theme that is discussed in the final two papers in this Part.

James Higham and Tom Hinch present, five years on from their earlier chapter in this Part, a further potential programme for research in Sport and Tourism Research: A Geographic Approach, which is the penultimate chapter in this Part. This chapter responds to the call for a greater focus on building ‘edifices of knowledge’ in my ESMQ Editorial (Chapter 1) through developing further the geographical perspectives on sport and tourism that, at least in part, underpinned their earlier paper (Chapter 3). Higham and Hinch use the concepts of space, place and environment as the theoretical foundations for this paper, which prompts research questions that could contribute to the development of a body of knowledge for sport and tourism. Hinch and Higham note that a geographic approach is but one of a number of approaches that could be applied to the study of sport and tourism, and invite scholars from other disciplines, for example, sociology and anthropology, to contribute to discussions surrounding the development of the field.

The final chapter in this Part is the second by myself Mike Weed, entitled Sports Tourism Research 2000—2004: A Systematic Review of Knowledge and a Meta-Evaluation of Methods. In this chapter, I provide an overview of the peer-reviewed research in sport and tourism included in the systematic review, not on the basis of personal judgement, but on clear and replicable criteria outlined in the chapter itself. The chapter not only identifies trends in the substantive issues addressed by contemporary research in sport and tourism, but also highlights some limitations of the methods and epistemologies employed. Higham and Hinch, in the earlier chapter (Chapter 5) comment on my discussion in the ESMQ Editorial relating to the predominance of empirical research employing quantitative research design. I made these comments in 2005 based on a preliminary version of the systematic review and meta-evaluation presented in this paper, which shows that over 70 per cent of primary peer-reviewed research in the period in question used a positivist research design. The chapter notes that the problem here is not with positivist approaches, but with the dominance of such approaches and their use on the basis of convention rather than their suitability in answering research questions.

The chapters in this Part have been selected to give deliberately varying views — some of which are complementary, some of which are not — on approaches to research in sport and tourism in the past and present, and potential avenues and approaches for the future. The discussions in each of these chapters are fundamental to the future development of the field, and I hope they provide a useful context for the remainder of the Reader.

REFERENCES

Biddle, S.J.H. (2006) ‘Research Synthesis in Sport and Exercise Psychology: Chaos in the Brickyard Revisited’, European Journal of Sport Science, 6 (2): 97—102.

Gibson, H.J. (1998) ‘Sport Tourism: A Critical Analysis of Research’, Sport Management Review, 1 (1): 45—76.

Hinch, T.D. and Higham, J.E.S. (2001) ‘Sport Tourism: A Framework for Research’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 3 (1): 45—58.

Jackson, G.A.M. and Glyptis, S.A. (1992) ‘Sport and Tourism: A Review of the Literature’, Report to the Sports Council, Recreation Management Group, Loughborough University, Loughborough: unpublished.

Weed, M. (1999) ‘More Than Sports Tourism: An Introduction to the Sport—Tourism Link’, in M. Scarrot (ed.), Proceedings of the Sport and Recreation Information Group Seminar, Exploring Sports Tourism. Sheffield: SPRIG.

Weed, M. (2005) ‘Research Synthesis in Sport Management: Dealing with Chaos in the Brickyard’, European Sport Management Quarterly, 5 (1): 77—90.

Weed, M. and Bull, C.J. (2004) Sports Tourism: Participants, Policy and Providers. Oxford: Elsevier.

Chapter 1

Mike Weed

SPORTS TOURISM THEORY AND METHOD—CONCEPTS, ISSUES AND EPISTEMOLOGIES

IN 2005 I WROTE A PIECE in ESMQ on approaches to research synthesis in sport management (Weed, 2005). This piece was subtitled “Chaos in the brickyard”. The analogy from which this subtitle was taken was drawn by Bernard Forscher in 1963 who, commenting on the development of social science knowledge, expressed concern about what he saw as the “random” and often ex...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Publication Acknowledgements
• General Introduction
• Part One: Sport & Tourism Research Approaches
• Part Two: Understanding the Sports Tourist
• Part Three: Impacts of Sport & Tourism
• Part Four: Policy and Management Considerations for Sport & Tourism
• Endpiece