High-end Sports Tourism: Concept Definition, Experience Dimension Identification and Scale Development

Abstract

The high-end sports tourism industry develops rapidly, but the related theory exploration obviously lags behind. As a new form of tourism, high-end sports tourism is lack of discussion and theoretical gap in terms of concept definition, experience dimension identification, which will certainly affect the expansion of high-end sports tourism research and further development of the industry. In order to solve the above problems, the study selects the most representative high-end sports tourism events in China, summarizes the definition of high-end sports tourism from the perspective of thematic study, and based on the prototype theory, on the basis of strictly following the development process of the scale, through qualitative research and empirical research, the measurement model of high-end sports tourism is constructed. It concludes that the experience of high-end sports tourism includes five dimensions, namely, hedonism, challenge, culture, sociality and symbolism. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the product experience dimension of high-end sports tourism, and provides a relatively reliable measurement tool for the follow-up study of high-end sports tourism.