engleski

Mega Sport Events Facing the Challenge of Social Responsibility

Analysis of a mega sport event’s sustainability is often based on the performance of its economic criteria, i.e. economic efficiency. Such understanding of this concept can mislead stakeholders involved in its organization and their conclusions about the success of an event might be based on wrong assumptions. Each event should ensure additional earnings for the local community, but not at any cost, since simultaneously ecological and socio-cultural resources have to be preserved and their sustainability has to be achieved. Neglecting the overall understanding of sustainability can lead to long-term negative consequences on the local community. In this paper the authors examine social responsibility of a mega sport event – World Football Championship in Brazil. Its role in tourism development of host cities was unommittable, but the exact consequences can only be evaluated in the long run. Most of the existing research in this field is focused on identifying potential social benefits for the local community, ranging from strengthening local identity, presenting local culture, creating a positive cultural atmosphere to increasing quality of life and similar benefits, but a very modest number of research has been focused on determining the actual social benefits to the local community and the individual weight of each of those indicators. Even though local economy can register major inflow of foreign currency, should this outperform potentially negative social impacts of such mega event? Therefore, the focus of the research is put on determining the indicators which would provide accurate information about the social responsibility of this event. Brazil stands as an appropriate research base, since the impact can only be determined after the event has been held and even more so because of the upcoming Olympic Games which are to be held there in 2016. The research will be conducted by using secondary data available in the official databases and data will be analyzed by using the methods of comparison and desk research. Based on the existing theoretical background the authors will relate the current socio-cultural environment in host destination with available indicators to determine the level of social responsibility of this event. The expected contribution of the paper is the evaluation of performance of World Football Championship in Brazil in terms of social responsibility. The main objective of the paper is to critically analyze the available data related to Brazil after the mega sport event has been held and relating them to the issue of social responsibility.

mega sport events ; social responsibility ; indicators ; Brazil ; World Football Championship

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