The impact of college football tourists’ personality and motivation on their destination and team loyalty

Abstract

College-sports events have gained popularity as a sports tourist attraction over the past decade. Thousands of fan visitors, such as students, their parents, and alumni, spend their weekend participating in college football games. The motivations of sports tourists, including internal and external forces, are considered to be a relevant reason to explain why they travel and what they expect from their destination. However, little research has been conducted concerning tourists’ satisfaction and their loyalty to a travel destination and a sports team through examination of tourists’ and motivations to attend the game. Thus, the purpose of the study is to examine the relationships among sports tourists’ Big Five Factor (BFF) personality traits, push and pull motivations, satisfaction with travel experience, and loyalty toward destination and team, as well as to investigate the differences between passive and nostalgic sports tourists based on self-determination theory. Online survey questionnaire was developed for sports tourists who have experienced attending college football tourism. A total of 301 usable data were collected from 151 passive tourists and 150 nostalgic tourists. The results of the study indicate that BFF personality traits either positively or negatively associated with sports tourists’ travel motivations, especially for push factors (i.e., socialization). Entertainment motivation was found to be the most important motivation factor in generating sports tourists’ satisfaction and destination loyalty. Interestingly, sports tourists’ satisfaction did not necessarily lead to team loyalty, but team loyalty become significant through the examination of destination loyalty. The findings of this study provide an answer to the research questions about understanding the motivations for sports game attendance and the development of sports events. More research is needed to provide further empirical support for the relationships between sports tourists’ personality, motivations, and loyalty found in this study.