Sport Tourism and the Economic Impacts on Host Communities

Tourism industry has recently been the world's first industry based on income generation and economic growth. The aim of the present study was to examine the attitude of sports and tourism experts about the economic impact of sports tourism on the host community. Research samples are comprised of the specialists in sport and tourism areas. Research tools have been gathered from some parts of the standard questionnaire by Hritz and Ross (2010) that was used only after being confirmed of its validity and reliability (α:0.83). Data from 203 questionnaires returned were analyzed by SPSS V.21 and Amos V.21 software and Bartlett test, KMO index, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used. KMO index and Bartlett test are confirmed using the data distribution for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). Exploratory factor analysis also extracted two factor titled “positive effects” and “negative effects”. In order to investigate the most important factors, using the confirmatory factor analysis, the “income and employment enhancement index” and “Pseudo employment during the tourism event after it due to the seasonality of the sports tourism index’’ with a factor loading of 0.86 in the positive effects and negative effects, respectively, are the most important economic effects of sports tourism in host community.