| Hosting mega-events not only brings immediate development, but also has gradually become the important strategy of the long-term development of the city.After the 1999 Kunming World Expo hosted in China, the major cities across the country are scrambling to host similar events, such as the 29 th Olympic Games, the41 th World Expo and the 2nd Youth Olympic Games. These events can make the social resources fully integrated in a relatively short period of time, bringing an omni-directional influence to the host city and shaping a new image of the host city. It can also quickly attract a large number of tourists, having great influence on the development of tourism. As a comprehensive World Expo hosted in China for the first time, the success of the Shanghai World Expo made tremendous impact on Shanghai and even the whole country and these impacts were long-term. Researching and clearing the comprehensive influence of the Shanghai World Expo is an important research for the present and the future, which can not only provide decision-making basis to make full use of the subsequent impact of the mega-events but also is an important reference for other cities to host similar events.Based on the related theories and literature review, the paper studied the mega event’s comprehensive influence and further analyzed the impact of the image of Shanghai world expo through qualitative and quantitative analysis methods. First, this paper studied temporal-spatial distribution and evolution of the Shanghai World Expo’comprehensive influence and tourism influence based on the content of newspapers;Second, by using social statistics software SPSS, this paper conducted exploratory factor analysis of the questionnaire, etc. The paper also analyzed the spatial distribution rule of Shanghai World Expo image influence using Arc GIS software.Main conclusions were following:(1)Based on the domestic newspaper, many places were affected by Shanghai Expo, involving a total of 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.Obvious difference of influence intensity existed between different periods,theprovinces or municipalities which were affected greatly were concentrated in east China, especially developed coastal cities. The special extreme value appeared in Beijing and Shanghai.(2)The themes of the Expo covered a wide range of topics. Although the focus of media presented periodical characteristics, but the focus mainly concentrated on the pavilion, tourism, city, development, innovation, service, technology and others. The relative influence of Expo on the themes at different periods also presented obvious differences and the difference was obvious at the periods of before and after the event while during the event, the difference was not obvious.(3)The influence of Shanghai World Expo had temporal variation distribution law.On the one hand, the number of news reports and words of the Expo presented inverted “V” and during the Expo, the number of reports presented irregular “U”, the number of words presented irregular “W”. On the other hand, the trend of comprehensive influence of the Expo presented inverted “V”and the tourism’s presented “ 几 ”. On the whole, the influence of Shanghai World Expo enhanced gradually at first and then decreased.(4)The influence of each province or municipality was different, but no matter before the event or after the event, the provinces or municipalities which were greatly affected by the Expo were concentrated in the developed coastal cities in China,especially Beijing, the impact on Beijing was largest.(5)The influence of the Shanghai World Expo had obvious spatial distribution,but it did not fully conform to the distance attenuation rule. First, comprehensive and tourism influence of the Shanghai World Expo presented spatial distribution without obvious distance attenuation rule, but on the whole, the influence of eastern cities were greater than the western cities’. Second, a large part of the influence of Shanghai Expo was covered in the range of 1270 km, the influence became smaller while the distance was more than 1270 km. Third, spatial polarization existed. For the Beijing,distance was not the key factor affecting the spatial distribution of its comprehensive influence. Last, the Expo image influence did not fully follow the descending distance rule, too. The influence of eastern provinces and cities was smaller than the central provinces and cities. At the same time, the western provinces and cities, far away from Shanghai, were little affected.(6)There did not exit obvious correlation between the perception of Shanghai Expo and the Expo’ comprehensive influence, in other words,the correlationbetween the perception and newspaper was not obvious,too. In some provinces and cities where there were more newspaper reports, their people had low perception.Meanwhile, the people of some provinces and cities where there were little newspaper reports had higher perception, forming perceived intensity center. The main reason might be that on the one hand, newspaper was no longer the main channel for young people to obtain information, so young people were less influenced by newspaper reports. On the other hand, tourists’ perception of the Expo image influence was affected by the proximity-effect and the contents were targeted, so the subjectivity of the perception was strong. |
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