Abstract:
This study tests a theoretical model that investigates residents sports tourism perceptions: Purpose, Participants, Setting, and Sports tourism impacts which affect to support for sports tourism development. The model consisted five latent constructs and four path hypotheses. A sample size of resident in Thailand from Bangkok/Chiang Mai/Chonburi/Nakhon Ratchasima/Phuket 1,920 was used in this study by purposive sampling, 1,104 resident respondents were analyzed after completing surveys. Sports tourism impacts scale composed of 23 attributes was investigated by exploratory factor analysis, revealing four factors: Cultural-environmental-social benefits, Cultural-Social-economic costs, Economic benefits, and Environment deterioration. Utilizing AMOS procedure, the relationships of purposes, participants, settings, sport tourism impacts, and support for sports tourism development were analyzed. Structural equation modellings were performed completely on the collected data. Results indicated four supported hypotheses ; perceived purpose influence perceived participants, perceived participants influence perceived setting, perceived setting influence perceived sports tourism impacts, and perceived sports tourism impacts influence support for sports tourism development. Findings: Two new paths were added in the final model to enhance model fit. The first path is the relationship between purpose and setting and the second path is the relationship between participants and sports tourism impacts which was positively related at 0.05 significance level. And, the structural equation model of Purpose, Participants, Setting, Sports tourism impacts, and Support for sports tourism development was fit to the empirical data with Chi-square/df = 2.968, AGFI = 0.929, GFI = 0.948, and RMSEA = 0.042.