"Come for the City" or "Gather for the Event"?: Influence Mechanism of City Attractiveness and Event Identification on Behavioral Intention of Off-site Audiences

The causal relationship among city attractiveness, sports event identification and behavioral intention was explored. Data was collected from 367 audiences from other cities. Literature review, surveys and the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) were adopted. It was found that sports event identification played a full mediating role in the influence of city attractiveness on the intention of rewatching and recommending events intention, while sports event identification played a complementary mediating role in the influence of city attractiveness on the intention of revisitting and recommending cities. Several suggestions were proposed as follows: Event organizers should carry out market research for market segmentation and differentiated marketing. Focus should be on improving the natural scenery of the surrounding areas of the venues. In terms of the release of events and tourism information, event organizers could, in collaboration with tourism enterprises, design and develop products together. Big data technology shall be adopted to provide customized services for the off-site audiences. And the omni-media platform could be taken to conduct integrated marketing of the city image and the sports event image.