Resident perceptions of the socio-economic legacy left by the Rio 2016 Olympic games

Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only.This study seeks to examine Rio de Janeiro residents’ perception of the socio-economic impacts left from hosting the Rio 2016 Olympic Games after a full Olympic cycle (i.e., 4 years). For the first time in history, the Olympic Games were hosted in a country in South America, however the selection of Rio as the host for the 2016 Games follows an uprising trend of emerging countries (i.e., BRICS) being selected to host the Olympic Games. Thus, this study aims to add to the broader literature of mega sporting events impacts on emerging countries, by introducing a long-term analysis approach. Based on the concepts of the social exchange theory (i.e., SET) and of the temporal construal theory (i.e., TCT), this study proposes a necessity to have more residents’ perception studies of mega-events impacts being conducted after a full Olympic cycle. The results show that Rio de Janeiro residents perceived hosting the 2016 Olympic Games as having mostly a negative impact on their socio-economic life, since 24 out of the 31 items being analyzed had a lower average than four (M < 4) on a 7-point Likert Scale. Furthermore, differences between different demographic variables are analyzed under the results section, while residents’ feelings extracted from the open-ended questions are expressed under the discussion section.Thesis (M.S.