Effective Factors in Tourists’ Attendance at Sport Events Using the TOPSIS Method

Nowadays, tourist’s presence in sport events guarantees the survival and maintenance of sport event’s organizers. Understanding the effective factors of tourist’s attendance at sport events can help us organize their presence. Therefore the aim of the present study was to identify and prioritize the effective factors of tourists’ attendance in sport events. The research method was a descriptive and survey one. The sample of the study included 319 tourists from national team participating in the national football teams. The data was collected using Wimbledon questionnaire the validity of which had been approved by 10 professors of Gilan University and 10 experts in tourism industry. The research data were analyzed using Shannon entropy methods and TOPSIS with the Excel software. The findings of this study indicated that from the tourists’ views, socialization, entertainment and relaxation (push factors), destination, and fan’s motives (pull factors) were the most effective factors on tourist’s attendance in sport events. Also personal and financial problems, risks (deterrent factors) were the most effective factors on tourist’s absence in sport events. It was concluded that push factors (socialization, relaxation and entertainment) in comparison with pull factors (destination and fan’s motives) are more important for tourists to attend sport events; it means that they are more attracted to sport events through keeping out of current space (factors which are related to source) rather than by event attractiveness and destination attractiveness (factors which are related to destination). Moreover, it should be noted that despite the various financial and personal problems (deterrent factors), tourists prefer to participate in events. Also it should be mentioned that a single motivation is rarely known as a unique reason for traveling; however, a number of motivation factors may be at work for travelling. But some motivations are more specific to sport such as competition, enjoyment, or a special interest.