Hosting Olympic Games under a state of emergency: are people still proud of their country?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to identify the fluctuation of national pride during the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021. Previous research has found that hosting mega sporting events increases national pride. However, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games were held under a situation different than that considered by conventional research. The Tokyo Olympic Games faced opposition from public opinion due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This research involved two surveys conducted before and after the Tokyo Olympic Games. The results showed that people’s national pride increased. Furthermore, the impact of the Tokyo Olympic Games varied across individuals. Respondents who were anxious about COVID-19 experienced a smaller increase in national pride due to the event than those who were less anxious about COVID-19. This research concludes that hosting mega sporting events can increase national pride, but this effect is limited in the context of severe social issues. The limitations of this research and directions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• National pride
• Tokyo Olympic Games
• COVID-19
• hosting mega sporting event
• Japan

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. This study was conducted with the approval of the Niigata University of Health and Welfare Ethics Committee (Approval number: 18,676–210,803). Research participants received an explanation of the proposed research and were told that submitting the questionnaire meant that they were providing consent to participate in the research.

2. Confirmatory factor analysis allows the correlation between the error term of COVID-19 (1) and the error term of COVID-19 (2).

3. The venues were in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, Ibaraki, Shizuoka, Fukushima, Miyagi and Hokkaido.

4. For the supplemental analysis, the relationship between the frequency of watching the Tokyo Olympic Games and national pride was analysed. Even when pre-attitudes towards the Tokyo Olympic Games were controlled, a statistically significant positive association was found.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Research Start-up from the Niigata University of Health and Welfare (R03A15).