Local Support on Sports Tourism Development: An Integration of Emotional Solidarity and Social Exchange Theory

Abstract

Globally, sports tourism is considered a vital type of tourism that combines sports and tourism to attract tourists, contribute to the economy, and promote local culture. Despite its straightforward relevance, the current literature finds some drawbacks of the social exchange theory (SET) in modeling local support in tourism development, particularly when dealing with emotional interactions among tourists and locals. Thus, this study integrates the emotional solidarity construct (i.e., welcoming nature, sympathetic understanding, and emotional closeness), residents’ attitudes, and the extension of SET (i.e., support for sports tourism, community contribution, and future support for sports tourism development) to model the residents’ support for future sports tourism development, with personality traits as a moderating variable between emotional solidarity and attitude. This study uses random sampling to obtain the response from 1004 residents in Danao City (Philippines)—an emerging destination for sporting events. Furthermore, partial least squares—structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is utilized to examine the direct relationships among the exogenous and endogenous constructs and the moderating effect of personality traits (i.e., Big Five personality traits). The results revealed that all direct relationships were supported, indicating that those emotional interactions among tourists and residents would affect the latter’s view on their support for sports tourism which would consequently translate to support for future development agenda. However, the moderating effect of the personality traits was not supported. Furthermore, a multigroup analysis was conducted to gain more profound implications on the varying attitudes of the residents towards sports tourism. Based on the study’s findings, insights were drawn for governments to design specific measures for developing sports tourism in view of local support.