The Olympics as an urban policy choice: Post-Games assessments of economic value by host city residents

ABSTRACT

Olympic boosters have increasingly encountered opposition among city residents about the idea of hosting the Games. Among factors leading cities to question the advisability of hosting the Olympics is the issue of cost, which has critically shaped public opinion in bid cities. Considerable attention has been given to public opinion among local residents in host Olympic cities in both the bid phase and the preparation phase. In contrast, this paper uses microdata from Game-time public opinion surveys and post-Games surveys gathered 1 year and 4 years after the Games in both Vancouver and London using models that control for the demographic characteristics of respondents in order to understand how local residents perceive the economic value and economic outcomes of hosting the Games. Experiencing the Games leads to attitudinal shifts about value but does not resolve the question of whether hosting the Olympics is an appropriate urban priority.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Harry H. Hiller

Harry H. Hiller is Director of the Cities and the Olympics Project and Faculty Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Calgary in Canada. He has been doing research and writing about the Olympics since the Winter Olympics were held in Calgary in 1988. A frequent speaker at conferences and academic forums around the world and especially in bid cities and cities awarded the Games, Hiller has also been a participant in the meetings of the World Union of Olympic Cities. As an urban sociologist, his specialization is on how cities and their residents are impacted by the Olympics. Among his many publications is his book Host Cities and the Olympics: An Interactionist Perspective (Routledge, 2012).

Richard A. Wanner

Richard A. Wanner is Faculty Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary and Academic Director of the Prairie Regional Research Data Centre. In addition to his work on the Cities and the Olympics project, his current research focuses on the effects of immigration on the Canadian economy, internal migration among immigrants to Canada, and trends in social stratification and mobility in Canada. His work has appeared in many scholarly journals, including the International Migration Review, Comparative Sociology, Social Forces, Demography, Canadian Journal of Sociology, Sociology, and the Canadian Review of Sociology.