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Running away from home: understanding visitor experiences and behaviour at sport tourism events
Author(s) -
Shipway Richard,
Jones Ian
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
international journal of tourism research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.155
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1522-1970
pISSN - 1099-2340
DOI - 10.1002/jtr.641
Subject(s) - tourism , underpinning , social identity theory , identification (biology) , salient , event (particle physics) , social psychology , visitor pattern , psychology , identity (music) , ethos , sociology , marketing , social group , advertising , political science , aesthetics , business , engineering , philosophy , civil engineering , botany , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , law , biology , programming language
Existing sport tourism research has been subject to claims of lacking coherence, theoretical underpinning and empirical support. This paper addresses these issues through an examination of a group of distance runners participating in the Cyprus International Four‐day Challenge . Using the concepts of ‘serious leisure’ and social identification, the behaviours of this group of sport tourists are described and explained. The key finding was the strength of identification that participants had with the activity, and the nature of the event itself, which made this identity much more salient than other identities during the course of the event. This sense of identification was used to explain the unique ethos of the group, the use of significant personal effort, the perseverance of participants, the durable benefits obtained by the runners and the career structure associated with this social world. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.