Publication:

The Service Quality and Community Attribute Effect Impacts on Satisfaction for Marathon Event

Perceived quality of service quality and community attributes are crucial factors to sport events. Since sports tourists’

experiences are largely influenced by the services provided and the service quality of sports event requires to be detected the

fitness for consumers. SERVQUAL is a popular model to measure the service quality for consumers, but it is not fit for outdoor

recreation sports. Meanwhile the smaller recurring sport events such as local marathons tour may produce more sustainable

economic impacts for host community. The success of sports event needs support by community residents. Community attribute

also affects satisfaction of visitors. In order to measure the service quality and community attribute of marathon event

simultaneously. The aim of study is to revise the Scale of Service Quality for Recreational Sports (SSQRS) and combine

community attribute to design a questionnaire and make a survey for runners. The methods, exploratory factor analysis is

adopted to extract the perceived quality into five main factorial dimensions, including outcome quality, facility quality,

interaction quality, information quality, and community attributes for participants in marathon event. Regression analysis is

performed to explore service qualities and community attribute impacts on satisfaction and intent to return for participants in

running event. The results show that all of service quality factors have a significance impact on satisfaction for runners. The

intent to return of participants is influenced by interaction quality and community attributes. The important conclusion

contribution of this study reveals that community attribute of sports event impacts on satisfaction and behavioral intensions. The

sport managers should pay attention to host community for supporting sports event. Offering a high service quality and

community attribute to the recreational and sport consumers may promote the participation in recreational and sport activities

and revisit these activities in future.