Assessing the tourism impacts of urban marathon events in central China's historic cities: a residents’ SEM analysis

As an emerging form of sports tourism, city marathons have become an important means to stimulate local economic growth and enhance urban image. However, empirical evidence on how such events influence tourism development in economically underdeveloped but culturally rich cities remains limited. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory (SET) and the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), this study constructs a structural equation model (SEM) to examine, from the residents' perspective, how perceptions of tourism economic impacts (TEC), tourism image impacts (TIM), and tourism spatial impacts (TSP) affect residents' attitudes toward the marathon (RAT) and their intention to support it (RIS). Using the Kaifeng City Marathon as a case study, the results show that all three perceived impacts significantly and positively influence residents' attitudes, with tourism image perception having the strongest effect. Positive attitudes, in turn, significantly enhance residents' support intention. Mediation analysis further reveals that attitude fully mediates the effects of economic and image perceptions, while partially mediating the spatial perception. These findings provide empirical evidence for how sports events can promote tourism development in economically underdeveloped small cities.