Community Sport Social Benefits: A Basis for Continuous Improvement

Community sport events, like any other sports endeavor, must be concerned with continuous improvement in order to remain or become competitive over time. In this study, we document a survey method that links the social benefits community sport attendees sought to levels of satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Using a combination of techniques such as OLS regression and word clouds for analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from our survey, our findings suggest that knowledge of the social benefits desired by a specific sport subculture may have several practical uses. For example, an awareness of desired social benefits may allow community sport managers to design and develop events with higher and more consistent levels of attendee satisfaction as well as obtain, or maintain, support from community residents and leaders. High levels of attendee satisfaction are found to be significantly related to the perceived social benefits of a community sport event as well as to the perception of the importance of the sport event to the community and individual intentions to support the event in the future.