Involvement, social impacts and subjective well-being: Brazilians’ experiences from Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games

ABSTRACT

As primary funders of sport mega-events, host country residents deserve to reap benefits. Subjective well-being (SWB) can be one such positive outcome. Research analyzing the relationship between sport events and SWB is limited, and results are ambiguous. This study examines the effects of social impact experiences from the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games (Rio 2016) on SWB of host country residents, considering attitudinal involvement with the event. Using a cohort longitudinal design, data were collected during (n = 402) and six months after (n = 401) the event. Attitudinal involvement was significantly related to most factors of social impact experiences during, but not after Rio 2016. Social impact experiences were low during and even lower after Rio 2016, not contributing significantly to SWB of Brazilians. SWB was high during and after Rio 2016, but not significantly different between these moments. Rio 2016 did not affect the SWB of residents.

KEYWORDS:

• Feel-good effect
• Olympics
• psychic income
• social capital
• sport mega-events

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).