Host city and non-host city resident perceptions of the 2010 Soccer World Cup

Various role players have an influence on tourism development and tourism products such as mega events. South Africa hosted the 2010 Soccer World Cup which influenced various communities and the country as a whole. However the perceptions exist that host community residents received more benefits from this event than non-host community residents. This study therefore investigated host community and non-host community resident perceptions of the impacts of the 2010 Soccer World Cup. The survey was conducted in June 2010 where Port Elizabeth was selected as host city and Bredasdorp as non-host city. Fieldworkers collected 306 questionnaires in Bredasdorp and 300 questionnaires in Port Elizabeth by means of on-site surveys. Using a Principal Axis Factoring method for extraction and Oblimin rotation with Kaiser normalisation, 5 factors were identified for Bredasdorp, and a similar 5 were identified for Port Elizabeth. The factors were labelled as: Factor 1 is Community Services, Factor 2 is Community Problems, Factor 3 is not labelled, Factor 4 is Community Economy and Factor 5 is Community Life. Cross-tabulations were done to compare the two destinations according to demographic and behavioural characteristics and a t-test for Equality of Means were calculated to determine significant differences for both cities on the extracted factors. The host city residents were in general more positive and involved in the World Cup and bought on average 2.53 tickets whereas residents of the non-host city bought 0.18 tickets to matches. The results indicated that even though both cities experienced the tourism impacts of the soccer event as positive, host-city residents experienced the World Cup highly positive and participated to a greater extent