Do golf fans walk the talk? Follow-up of spectators' beliefs and self-reported physical activity 3 months after they attended a professional golf tournament in the UK

Sport Spectatorship and Health Benefits: A Case of a Japanese Professional Golf Tournament

It has been well-argued that professional sport or mega sport events could serve as a catalyst for sport participation behaviors through direct and indirect trickle-down effects. However, there is limited research exploring the impact of spectator services during sport events on personal and collective well-being. Elaborating on the social-ecological model and the concept of market demand, this study attempted to fill the gap in the literature by measuring core product (player attraction, event attractiveness, and course characteristics) and peripheral spectator services (event services, event information, event amenity, and parking and transportation) of a professional golf tournament hosted in Japan and examining how these services factors would influence spectators’ length of stay at a golf event, physical activity as measured by step counts, self-rated health, and life satisfaction. Following the administration of a questionnaire to spectators at a Japanese professional golf tournament (n = 306) and conducting confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses, research findings revealed that the tournament-related spectator services would have an influence on physical activity, which could in turn influence self-rated health and subsequently impact life satisfaction. That is, emphasizing the sense of accomplishment fulfilled in sport spectatorship is recommended for the well-being of the spectators. The findings of this study shed light on the significance of promoting golf spectatorship as an effective means to facilitate a healthy lifestyle and in the meantime provide golf event marketers with a unique, positive benefit through which their events can be promoted.

Maximising and evaluating the uptake, use and impact of golf and health studies

Introduction

The dissemination of research, and evaluation of its impact is an increasing priority for the scientific community and funders. We take the topic of golf and health and aim to outline processes that may contribute to improved research uptake, use and impact proposing a research impact (RI) tool. We then evaluate our published research using the Research Contributions Framework (RCF).

Methods

Building on existing research and frameworks we i) assessed the need for, ii) carried out and iii) published research, before iv) creating digital resources, v) sharing these resources widely and vi) evaluating our research.

To evaluate uptake, use and impact of our three principal golf and health research outputs, we performed a contributions analysis, using the RCF first proposed by Morton.

Results/Discussion

We developed a specific six-step Research Impact tool. Having implemented this, research uptake and use included over 300 press articles, a dedicated website and social media channels. Golf’s global industry leadership dispersed information across >150 countries, embedded golf and health into curricula for industry professionals and used leading tournaments to promote health. National policy makers hosted dedicated meetings regarding golf and health and began to implement policy change.

Conclusion

To date, strong uptake and use can be demonstrated for these studies, while a final contribution to impact requires further time to determine.

Frameworks we used aiming to maximise impact (Research Impact tool) and evaluate its contribution to uptake, use and impact (Research Contribution Framework) could potentially add value to public health/sports medicine researchers.