The Perceived Social Impacts of the 2006 Football World Cup Research Paper

The Perceived Social Impacts of the 2006 Football World Cup - Research Paper Example From a general point of view, the authors discussed all the positive and negative impacts that previous authors have associated with sporting events. The article then narrows down to the specific case of the 2006 football world cup. A close analysis at the world cup event reveals the presence of both positive and negative social impacts. These reviews will highlight the key findings from the research conducted by the authors. The article offers an extensive literature review on the perceived social impacts of sports events. This lays a good background for the research conducted by the authors. From the literature review, it emerges that sports events register some critical positive impacts such as a sense of pride, entertainment opportunities, shared experiences, promotional of regional identity, the introduction of new ideas, expansion of cultural perspectives, validation of community pride, as well as increased community participation. On the other hand, sports events present some undesirable negative social impacts such as theft, noise, bad fan behavior, traffic congestion, social dislocation, community alienation, and prostitution. In order to investigate the social impacts registered by 2006 football world cup, the authors adopted the approach of measuring host community perceptions. This method has the potential of identifying different perceptions held by different individuals in the host community . As highlighted by the authors, the subjectivity of this approach is its main disadvantage. The authors relied on face-to-face structured interviews with selected Munich residents. They made use of questionnaires, which were filled in by the interviewers. Random sampling was used to identify the participants from different suburbs of Munich. The authors identified 180 responses, but only 130 interviews occurred. Notably, the researchers ensured that the participants were from different age groups.