The Influence Of Sports Events On The Host City’s Image From The Perspective Of Local Residents

With the development of the economy of Azerbaijan,the change in many people’s tourism concept,and the increase in leisure time,tourism has thrived in Azerbaijan and has gradually become one of the crucial pillars representing Azerbaijan’s economic growth.Moreover,the state gradually attaches importance to sports events and constantly promotes the integration and development of sports events and tourism.Under this background,the sports tourism industry is booming,and it is showing an intense development momentum day by day.How to better respond to the state’s call and enhance the image of the tourist destination through sports events is an urgent problem to be solved.Through the methods of literary analysis,questionnaire survey,and in-depth interview,this study takes how do Baku F1 events of the 2021 year affect the image of the tourism destination from the venue Baku from the perspective of local residents as the research object,takes Baku as a case,and analyzes the relationship between F1 events and Baku’s urban image from two periods before and after F1 events.This paper mainly analyzes the influence of F1 events on Baku tourism destination image from the perspective of local residents from four aspects: cognitive image,emotional image,overall image,and the relative image status of F1 events in Baku tourism.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The cognitive image of Baku’s tourism destination can be divided into four factors: tourism environment and projects,tourism resources and services,local tourism characteristics,tourism facilities,and social environment.Residents in Baku have a positive evaluation of the cognitive image of tourist destinations before and after F1,and residents’ cognition of local image after F1 is higher than before F1.(2)After the competition,the five emotional evaluations of local residents on Baku’s sports tourism all increased to a certain extent before the F1 competition,and the most noticeable increase in their psychological experience was "Baku’s tourism is interesting and exciting," which showed that F1 race was prevalent among residents.(3)The cognitive evaluation of Baku residents on the cognitive image,emotional image,and overall image of tourist destinations is higher than that before F1.This sports event has played a good role in promoting Baku’s tourism image.(4)From the perspective of Baku residents,under the background of the prevention and control of the new crown epidemic,the impact of the F1 competition without live audiences is not very large on the local people’s viewing of sports events because most local residents do not directly go to the scene to watch,but through the Internet and television broadcast.(5)From the perspective of Baku residents,although local residents believe that the impact of sports events on the image of the host city is meaningful and positive,it needs to be admitted that the 2020 F1 sports events in the background of the new corona epidemic have a particular impact on the perception of the tourism image of Baku,because,under the background of epidemic prevention and control,the official celebration activities and tourism,entertainment and leisure related leisure activities have decreased,which to a certain extent affects the local residents’ perception of the image of urban tourism and reduces the positive impact of sports events on the image of the host city.