The impact of image congruence between sport event and destination on behavioural intentions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of image congruence between sport events and their hosts as perceived by sport tourists on future visits to the destination, respectively the sport event. Design/methodology/approach – In order to measure image congruence an indirect, multi‐attributive measure was chosen – using a self‐administered questionnaire distributed to sport tourists at six different sport events in Germany – so as to be able to investigate the two images first separately and second to construct an independent fit measure using the absolute differences of corresponding items. Logistic regression analyses evaluated dependencies between image congruence, location components and socio‐demographic aspects on behavioural intentions. Findings – The results show that the overall models are significant and that certain elements such as the affinity of atmosphere do play a central role in predicting future visits. Research limitations/implications – A research limitation could arise due to the sample because almost all sport tourists were German. A more international sample might have shown different results. Future research should analyse samples of different sports concluding whether the sport performed influences behaviour, too. Practical implications – Some practical implications with respect to the kind of appeal towards sport tourists are given. Originality/value – This paper shows that not only separated images affect future behaviour but that the perceived fit between two actually distinct images influences behaviour as well.