’Investigating residents’ attitudes of 2016 Olympic Games: examining socio-cultural, economic and environmental dimensions

Olympic Games provide an arguably unparalleled amount of opportunities for the host city and country in relation to economic and socio-cultural growth and development. However, the achievement of such long-term success measures lie with holistic involvement of community groups, residents’ specifically, in the planning of the mega events. The purpose of this paper is to examine the residents’ attitudes of the 2016 Olympic Games and to verify moderating effects of place of residence in support of the Games. This study aims to contribute to the developing application of country branding, by examining attitudes of internal stakeholder groups in the form of residents. The data was collected in Brazil during the months leading to the Rio Olympic Games (pre-event) using non-probabilistic convenience sampling. A total of 501 responses were collected prior to the opening ceremony of the event. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were applied. The socio-cultural and economic dimensions had a positive and significant effect on support for the Olympic Games, however, environmental dimension did not have such strong effect. Furthermore, differences between host and non-host city residents were tested positive in support of Olympic Games. This research presents a conceptual model to further establish importance of such attitudes for organisers and government authorities involved with the bidding, planning and management of mega-events from country branding perspective.