Investigating the satisfaction of active event sport tourists

Active event sport tourists (AESTs) are those tourists who are taking part in organised events as competitors. Each event is held in a particular destination and, as a part of a highly competitive industry, both events and destinations offer an ever-widening range of services, striving to make their visitors satisfied. In order to better understand, conceptualize and manage the AESTs’ satisfaction, the primary research based on a questionnaire survey was conducted on 16 small-scale sports events, collecting 502 responses. Results indicate that six satisfaction categories emerged: four event-related dimensions (staff and communication, event reputation, safety, and facilities and key processes) and two destination-related dimensions (destination offering and destination attributes). Understanding the role of the satisfaction of AESTs in a small-scale sport event creates both scientific and practical contributions, where sport event management and marketing need to consider each of these satisfaction categories in order to design and deliver the best active sport tourism experience.

For AESTs, the central motivation for attending a sport event is the event itself. However, the event does not exist in a vaccum and the connection between sport events and destinations has been previously researched, where hosting sport events has been identified as a managerial and marketing strategy for enhancing destination attractiveness and development (Bazzanella, Peters, & Schnitzer, 2019;Filo, Chen, King & Funk, 2013;Kaplanidou & Vogt, 2007;Kirkup & Sutherland, 2017;Portugal, Campos, Martins, & Melo, 2017;Yuksel, Yuksel & Bilim, 2010). On the other hand, for sport events and destinations to be sustainable over time (i.e. to ensure revisit and viable financial flow), it is crucial that all participants are content with the overall offering.
Participant's satisfaction is considered a key criterion for appraising services (Yoshida & James, 2011). Satisfaction of sport event participants, however, is a common topic for academics in the field of sport management and marketing. To date, previous researches have extensively investigated the satisfaction of spectators, while the active participants' satisfaction represents an underinvestigated research area, especially in small-scale sport event settings (Mouratidis, Doumi, & Thanopoulos, 2020). However, not only is there a difference between active and passive participants' satisfaction, but there are also various approaches in measuring the participants' satisfaction (e.g. Alexandris, Theodorakis, Kaplanidou & Papadimitriou, 2017;Du, Jordan & Funk, 2015;Ko & Pastore, 2005;Shonk, Bravo, Velez-Colon & Lee, 2017;Theodorakis, Kaplanidou, Alexandris & Papadimitriou, 2019). These studies examined participants' personal judgment of events' services and overall context, but were limited by the events themselves while neglecting the broader context of destinations where the events have been held. Hence, as argued by Romo, Chinchilla and García (2010) and Yoshida (2017), further research on sport event satisfaction as well as on its determinants is needed. This paper focuses on the satisfaction of AESTs, as the prominent part of overall sport event demand. Knowing the main dimensions of AESTs' satisfaction is of the utmost importance for event organisers who can then focus on key attributes when planning, marketing and delivering their events. With regard to this understudied field of interest and in order to fill the mentioned research gaps, the novelty of this paper is the development of a framework for investigating the key factors affecting AEST satisfaction, adding the destination dimension within the small-scale sport event context. The next section reviews the literature on tourist satisfaction with special focus on the sport tourism event context. The third section describes the methodology implemented in the empirical study while the fourth chapter presents the results. The paper finishes with a discussion and some concluding remarks and implications.

Theoretical background on AESTs' satisfaction
Travel and tourism industry finds a satisfied tourist of utmost importance for its viability (Gallarza, Gil-Saura, & Arteaga-Moreno, 2017). Satisfied tourists spend more, are more likely to revisit and recommend a venue to others (Muskat, Hörtnagl, Prayag, & Wagner, 2019;Plunkett & Brooks, 2017;Prayag, Hosany, Muskat, & Del Chiappa, 2017). However, customer satisfaction, which is very individualised construct, is crucial when evaluating services and has therefore often been studied in direct relation to service quality (Yoshida & James, 2011). Service quality is one of the major factors influencing the profitability of an organization, and service quality can affect consumer satisfaction, loyalty and retention (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988;Tsuji, Bennett, & Zhang, 2007). Researches have underlined the linkage between service quality and satisfaction, and between satisfaction and organizational success (Kotler, 2003;Anderson & Sullivan, 1993, Fornell, 1992. Oliver (1980) examined consumer satisfaction or dissatisfaction as a balance of consumers' feelings of perceived performance of a service versus their expectations. Madrigal (1995) investigated the consumer's satisfaction in the sport setting and found that core service quality contributes to satisfaction. In other words, the perception of performance regarding service quality can be considered crucial for their experience and satisfaction (which is usually operationalised as overall satisfaction).
While previous studies have focused on spectators, other studies have centred on service quality from the perspective of AESTs. Since SERQUAL measurement scale is found to be inappropriate for an outdoor sport tourism context (Kouthouris & Alexandris, 2005;Donne, 2009), academics used alternative scales, for instance the ADVENTUREQUAL (Donne, 2009), SERVPERF (Lee, Kim, Ko & Sagas, 2011) or PSEASD -Participant Sport Event Attribute and Service Delivery (Du et al., 2015). Similarly to spectators, AESTs in most cases found event physical attributes and operations related to facility/program/interaction/information quality, as well as outcome quality strongly determined satisfaction of AESTs (Alexandris et al., 2017;Donne, 2009;Du et al., 2015;Howat & Assaker, 2013;Kouthouris & Alexandris, 2005;Lee et al., 2011;Theodorakis et al., 2019;Yeh et al., 2016). These studies have proven that the sport event evaluation in terms of quality and satisfaction are inter-related and that, if service quality improved, satisfaction and frequency of attending the particular sport event would increase (Alexandris et al., 2017;Yeh et al., 2016) as well as participants' quality of life (Theodorakis et al., 2019).
What these studies have in common is the heterogeneity of service quality that leads to an inconsistency in methodology for measuring participants' satisfaction and sports tourism quality. Many authors have suggested the need for gain more insight on the factors that affect customer satisfaction and comprehensive approaches on quality management within sports tourism (Kouthouris & Alexandris, 2005;Romo et al., 2010;Tsitskari et al., 2006;Yoshida, 2017). While physical environment dimension is found to be significant in shaping the perceived quality, which further influence overall satisfaction, it usually refers to sport facility, event atmosphere or entertainment program. In other words, the scope of the environment dimension does not go beyond the event itself thus leaving destination attributes omitted from examining the AESTs' satisfaction.
There is no doubt that, while being a part of the event, AESTs absorb and merge into the event setting and subjectively interpret their own active participation in sport activity within such setting (Brochado, Stoleriu & Lupu, 2018;Chen & Funk, 2010;Funk, 2017;Hallmann, Feiler, Müller, & Breuer, 2012;Kaplanidou & Vogt, 2010;Klaus & Maklan, 2011;Mirehie & Gibson, 2020;Saayman & Saayman, 2012;Shipway & Fyall, 2012;Stienmetz, Kim, Xiang, & Fesenmaier, 2020;Theodorakis et al., 2019;Yoshida, 2017). In addition to the individual behaviours of AESTs (personal motivation and individual choices), these interpretations depend on event infrastructure and organisation as well as supportive destination attributes that could be identified as the underlying elements of a sport event's business model contributing to value creation, value delivery and overall satisfaction of AESTs (Perić, Wise & Dragičević, 2017). Indeed, there is a rising need to cross traditional firms' (i.e. events') boundaries and to include destination into organisations' business models Reinhold, Zach, & Krizaj, 2019). The importance of the destination has been further identified as "place dependence" or functional attachment when visitors appreciate its unique settings (Anderson & Fulton, 2008;Harmon, Zinn & Gleason, 2005). Therefore, sport events operate in an environment which is becoming increasingly complex given the rise of visitors (Mintel, 2014) and destination marketers need to increasingly try to leverage destination attributes, especially the long-term benefits that remain after hosting events. It is therefore argued that it is necessary to go beyond sport tourists' initial motivation to visit the event, and to further investigate the secondary-level relationship between tourist's personal identity and a natural setting (i.e. a destination and/or an event) which can result in increased place attachment, event attachment, satisfaction and revisit intentions (Filo, Chen, King, & Funk, 2013;Kaplanidou & Gibson, 2010;Kirkup & Sutherland, 2017;Tsai, 2012). It follows that a consumer's overall satisfaction with an event and/or trip will depend upon the level to which her/his expectations regarding distinctive event and destination attributes are met (see Nghiêm-Phú, 2017).
AESTs (as well as spectators) are capable to distinguish between the event and destination attributes when taking part in an event and assessing their future loyalty (Kruger & Viljoen, 2019;Plunkett & Brooks, 2018). The importance of some event and destination attributes for AESTs was explored by Gibson (2016a, 2016b), Getz andMcConnell (2011, 2014), Kulczycki and Halpenny (2014), Newland and Aicher (2018) and Perić et al. (2019) but AESTs' satisfaction with particular attributes was not the issue in these studies. This paper therefore proposes new insights on the measurement of AEST satisfaction by including destination-related attributes in analysing small-scale sport events, which are congruent with the main principles of sustainable tourism and have distinct advantages compatible with the host destination (Bazzanella et al., 2020;Gibson, Kaplanidou & Kang, 2012;Kaplanidou & Gibson, 2010;Mouratidis et al., 2020).

Questionnaire development
In order to fulfil the research goals, primary research using a self-administered questionnaire was conducted. The questionnaire consisted of five closed questions about socio-economic and demographic details and elements regarding satisfaction with event and destination attributes, based on the current literature (Buning & Gibson, 2016a;Getz & McConnell, 2014;Kaplanidou & Gibson, 2010;Ko et al., 2011;Soita, 2012). A pilot study involving a focus group with six event organisers, sports and tourism managers was organised to purify the initial set of 54 items, to revise and/or propose new items if appropriate. The focus group participants assessed each of the proposed items based on their relevance, the items were ranked and the final list of items is reached with a consensus. Finally, the questionnaire employed in the research comprised 36 items, adapted and operationalized to the novelty of the research, using a five-point Likert type scale where 1 = 'not at all satisfied' and 5 = 'extremely satisfied'. According to the internationality of the events studied, the questionnaire was prepared in English and translated into Croatian, Italian and Slovenian by authorized translators.

Data collection and analysis
The research applied a quantitative approach. For data collection, a questionnaire-based survey is used. Data were collected from September 2016 to April 2017 in Slovenia and Croatia. The research sample was selected from a population of AESTs attending 16 selected sport events: seven mountain biking events, three trail running, four sport fishing and two cross-country skiing events (see Appendix 1). While these events are partly heterogeneous (belong to different sports), the common features for all of them are their small-scale size as well as outdoor and nature-based activity. Accordingly, it would be very difficult to gather adequate number of respondents for further analysis if events were approached separately.
The on-site research was based on the availability and willingness of participants to complete the questionnaire. Approaching the respondents at the end of the events, the author asked a screening question to all respondents, whether they had actively participated in the sports event. Those who answered positively and agreed to fill in the questionnaire were then given a questionnaire to complete after the competition, during the joint lunch. In total, 502 completed and valid questionnaires were collected, with a response rate of 19.93 per cent.
Descriptive analysis was used to explain the sample profile. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the reliability tests were used to further refine the research instrument and explore the dimensionality of the constructs.

Sample
The first step of data analysis provided a descriptive profile which is presented in Table 1. The proportion of male respondents was slightly higher (67.3 per cent) than the share of female participants. The respondents were mostly from Croatia (60.96 per cent) and Slovenia (30.48 per cent), but also belonged to the following countries: Italy and Serbia (1 per cent), Poland and Denmark (0.6 per cent), the UK, Austria, Macedonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (0.4 per cent) and other countries (3.18 per cent). More than half the respondents were married (53.2 per cent) with children (53.8 per cent). The age distribution demonstrates that the average age is 38.5 years. The monthly net income level for the majority of respondents is lower than 1500 EUR.

Mean ranking and normality test
The mean ranking of items shows that the AESTs are the most satisfied with variables related to destination and course scenery, destination safety and party atmosphere ( Table 2). The indicator values of Skewness and Kurtosis are between -2 and +2 which are considered acceptable to prove normal univariate distribution (Gravetter & Wallnau, 2014), except for the Kurtosis values of the items "The destination is scenic" (2.128) and "A scenic and interesting course" (3.082), indicating a positive "heavytailed" distribution, which can be justified accordingly to the purpose of the study, which is investigating satisfaction.

Principal component analysis
The principal component analysis (PCA) is used to group variables that are highly correlated into principal components. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy is 0.911 (considered "marvellous") and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity indicated the Chi-square value of each factor achieved the marked level (6387.518; p=0.000). These two tests supported the suitability of data for this analysis. One item was excluded because its factor loading was below 0.3 (Burns & Burns, 2008), and a clear factor structure was revealed by eight factors with eigenvalues greater than one. The communalities are above 0.4 as indicated by Hair, Black, Babin & Anderson (2010). However, the reliability test is calculated with Cronbach's alpha and Composite reliability. These tests delineated a good internal consistency for all the factors, except for two factors ('purchasing and sustainability' and 'course'), which are therefore eliminated from the further analysis and discussion. Table 3 presents the results of the exploratory factor analysis with six retained factors with eigenvalues greater than one, which accounted for 50.634 per cent of cumulative variance explained. The factor with the greatest variance explained, 'staff and communication', points out the satisfaction with and importance of the basic services focused on staff providing information to AESTs (e.g. "Skilled staff", "Up-to-date information about the event", "Staff give prompt answer/service to my demands", etc.).

Discussion and concluding remarks
Results suggest that service quality in an active sports tourism environment is complex and multidimensional. However, two aggregated groups of attributes could be distinguished within the proposed sport event satisfaction measurement scale. First, there are four event-related dimensions of satisfaction, namely, 'staff and communication' (factor 1), 'event reputation' (factor 3), 'safety' (factor 5), and 'facilities and key processes' (factor 6). Second, there are two destination-related dimensions of satisfaction, namely, 'destination offering' (factor 2) and 'destination attributes' (factor 4).
Regarding event-related dimensions, this study confirmed that the quality of service strongly depends on skilled staff who keep AESTs informed (factor 1). This is not surprising because staff directly interact with AESTs and skilled, responsive and well-mannered staff is found to be a key factor for AESTs' experiences (Alexandris et al., 2017;Donne, 2009;Du et al., 2015;Howat & Assaker, 2013;Perić et al., 2019). Availability of information on a user-friendly website is also important (Getz & McConnell, 2011. Event reputation (factor 3) is another satisfaction dimension of AESTs. It is supported by the social networking between many skilled participants as argued by Donne (2009) and Yoshida (2017) as well as the involvement of major corporate and media sponsors although corporate and media sponsors were not found highly important in specific mountain biking and trail running contexts (see Getz & McConnell, 2011. As expected, event and course safety (factor 5) emerged as an AEST satisfaction dimension. In addition to safety being one of the most salient decision-making facets for many tourists (Ghaderi, Saboori, & Khoshkam, 2017), active sport tourism also implies more risks related to injuries. The safety theme like course safety is therefore recognised by AESTs (see Buning & Gibson, 2016b;Hallmann, Kaplanidou, & Breur, 2010;Perić et al., 2018) who may be more sensitive to safety issues than non-sport tourists (Chen & Funk, 2010;Roche et al., 2013). The fourth event-related dimension (i.e. factor 6) refers to additional and ancillary services for AESTs that supplement the core sport product, such as parking areas, toilet facilities and signalization, which are found to be important attributes for both participant and spectator sports (Alexandris et al., 2017;Ko et al., 2011;Shonk et al., 2017). Besides these supportive elements, this dimension also involves some processes like proper implementation of security, crowd control and environmental protection measures which are proved to be the key elements of the event business model (Hallmann et al., 2010;Kaplanidou & Vogt, 2010;Perić et al., 2018; and strongly contribute to the overall sport user experience (Funk, 2017).
Unlike event-related dimensions, destination-related attributes go beyond the limits and give a broader context of an individual sport event (Kaplanidou, Jordan, Funk, & Ridinger, 2012;Kruger & Viljoen, 2019;Portugal, Campos, Martins & Melo, 2017). Although in cases of unique and iconic sport events and highlevel participants the destination area seems to be less important (Aicher & Newland, 2017;Getz & McConnell, 2011), many AESTs (and spectators too) still want to get familiar with the destination as a whole and enjoy in the different services it provides. Therefore, AEST satisfaction will depend on destination attributes (factor 4) which refer to destination safety, availability, scenery and weather conditions. Unsafe destinations will encounter problems in attracting tourists (Seabra, Dolnicar, Abrantes, & Kastenholz, 2013) and safety is an absolute precondition for successful tourism performance. The same is true for situational attributes like expected weather conditions in the destination, traffic availability of the destination and the destination landscapes which are evaluated by AESTs on a continuous basis, making them an important criterion when choosing between competing sport events and destinations (Buning & Gibson, 2016b;Getz & McConnell, 2011;Melo & Gomes, 2017). Interestingly, although weather conditions are beyond the control of the organiser, it seems that AESTs get used to and have no problem with bad weather conditions (Perić et al., 2018) since competitions are rarely cancelled in such cases. In addition, AEST satisfaction will also depend on the destination offering (factor 2), which includes entertainment, food and beverages and accommodation services available in the destination. These services are regularly analysed within a sport event context and, as argued by Getz andMcConnell (2011), Mirehie andGibson (2020), Newland and Aicher (2018) and Wäsche, Dickson and Woll (2013), are found decisive for the comprehensive sport tourism product. Since these services are usually beyond the control of event organisers, their provision can be effective only if a regional network of various stakeholders is in place (Wäsche et al., 2013) thus expanding the event's business model reach.
To summarise, this study empirically investigates the satisfaction of active participants of sport tourism events, that is AESTs. The proposed scale consists of six dimensions, of which four are event-related and two are destination-related. The inclusion of destination-related attributes in measuring the satisfaction of AESTs is a methodological novelty which has made comparison with other quality and satisfaction scales more difficult. The four event-related dimensions proposed in this study (staff and communication, event reputation, safety, and facilities and key processes) include both tangible/physical and intangible aspects of the (event sport tourism) service (see also Cronin & Taylor, 1992;Kouthouris & Alexandris, 2005;Lee et al., 2011). Also, these four dimensions cover the concepts of event quality and sport consumer quality as defined in previous studies. This means that the proposed dimensions refer to both core product and secondary services (Howat & Assaker, 2013;Shonk et al., 2017;Tsuji et al., 2007;Yoshida, 2017) as well as social networks and relationships with and between the customers (Donne, 2009;Ko & Pastore, 2005;Yeh et al., 2016;Yoshida, 2017). However, few items related to the course itself, which represents the core and the sportiest attribute of the event, did not enter the analysis. It is not only about the course aesthetics but also about the challenge associated with performance-oriented participants, although the attribute of challenge is found to be less important to AESTs than visual appeal (e.g. Getz & McConnell, 2014;Buning & Gibson, 2016a, 2016bPerić et al., 2019). The registration fee, which reflects directy the cost-benefit ratio for AESTs, should also be investigated in the future. On the other hand, purchasing possibilities at the event and party atmosphere are examples of such complimentary services, which are already recognised as important sport event attributes (Buning & Gibson, 2016a, 2016bGetz & McConnell, 2011Newland & Aicher, 2018;Yoshida, 2017) and event quality features (Alexandris et al., 2017;Du et al., 2015;Theodorakis et al., 2019;), but also remained outside the measurement scale and in-depth analysis. Similarly, respecting the interest of the local community and the aim to involve locals are also proved to be key organisational issues for both small-and large-scale sport events (see Schulenkorf & Edwards, 2012;Zhang & Park, 2015;Perić et al., 2019).
Still, the inclusion of destination-related attributes in the proposed measurement scale has further deepened the multidimensionality of sport consumer satisfaction. As argued before, it allows for a better apprehension of the sport experience and satisfaction concept in general. The inclusion of destinationrelated attributes therefore represents an innovative attempt for measuring AEST satisfaction thus contributing to the management and marketing theory. Instead of measuring satisfaction by a limited set of items as was the case in the most of similar studies that were examining service quality and participants' satisfaction at sport events, this study investigated the participants' satisfaction with a broad range of event and destination's attributes.
On the other hand, the conclusions and proposals of this paper are of great relevance for sport event practice. AESTs, who are performance oriented, are particularly responsive to the quality of a complex and sport-specific tourism product. Further, the interpretations of AESTs, as sport consumers, are directly dependent on the policies, procedures and processes of a sport organisation and broader sport context (Funk, 2017;Perić et al., 2017). It follows that the tourists' evaluation of infrastructure, organisational, environmental and other attributes within the event as well as the destination should be considered with full attention when developing sport tourism activities. It is therefore essential that sport event organisers as service providers consciously approach the issue of event business models and the value that AESTs are seeking. In other words, sport event organisers need to be familiar with AESTs' preferences towards and satisfaction with different attributes of the event they are organising as well as towards the whole destination where the event is taking place. Each attribute and dimension has an apparent place within the event's business model and event organisers can use this scale as a guideline to develop business and marketing strategies that will fit the existing demand of AESTs and to capture further benefits.
Despite the attempts to impartially analyse the selected literature on AESTs and to rigorously apply the selected methodology, this study comes with several limitations. While focusing on the satisfaction of AESTs, the perspective of spectators is neglected. Despite the fact that the selected sports (mountain biking, sport fishing, trail running, and cross-country skiing) are not viewed as typical spectator sports, first of all because of course characteristics, these sports still gather some audience watching the events. It is therefore expected that passive participants would assess the proposed attributes differently. Further, this study presumes that the dimensions of AEST satisfaction will be common for different types of sport events. An alternative approach, which would analyse the sports separately, could deliver different results. Also, sport tourism events gather participants who are differently motivated (e.g. to compete, to improve their skills, to socialize, to have fun, to enjoy the nature, to relax, etc.). Although competing does not necessarily have to be the primary focus of an event, the fact that the final ranking is important for some more competitively oriented participants should not be neglected. Thus, future research could consider also including the outcome of the core sport product (i.e. range of programs and mastering physical skills) which has to be distinguished from the outcome of the ancillary services (Yoshida, 2017). New studies also underline the importance of co-creation of the AEST's experience with the event and the destination, influencing the event and/or the destination loyalty (Yoo, Newland & Lee, 2020), which can be an interesting path for future researches. On the other hand, the information collected about the destination was limited to the sport event, with no tools to measure the AESTs' perception of the destination prior to attending the event. It should be recognized that the perceived destination image can be susceptible to several sources like promotional materials, social media, wordof-mouth, etc. Also, previous visits by AESTs over time have not been researched and it is difficult to divide any new information about the destination from previous experiences. Finally, the reliability test points to bad internal consistency of two factors and items related to the course features as well as purchasing and sustainability elements at the event need to be further investigated. Similarly, the total variance explained by extracted and retained factors is low and we can therefore speculate that there are other underlying dimensions that explain the participants' satisfaction. Therefore, this scale should be tested in future studies that would include AESTs from other individual and team sports in different contexts. Additional comparable results would probably contribute to a more refined cognition of various satisfaction dimensions and increase the generalisability of the scale. Hence, with regard to the post-trip process which can affect the satisfaction constructs, future research should adopt a control survey after the sport event is over and the AESTs return to their homes.