Interpretive structural modeling of the influential influence of social media on sports tourist behavior

Vakili Ghahani, Zahra; Noorbakhsh, Mahvash; Khodayari, Abbas; Noorbakhsh, Parivash

doi:10.22034/sms.2025.142640.1436

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ PhD student, Department of Sports Management, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran

² Professor, Department of Sports Management, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22034/sms.2025.142640.1436

Abstract

Objective: Social media influencers play a key role in shaping the behavior of sports tourists and influencing their travel decisions by producing persuasive content. The aim of this study was to construct an interpretive structural modeling of influence of social media influencers on sports tourist behavior.
Method: This research was applied in terms of purpose and mixed (qualitative-quantitative) in terms of methodology. In the qualitative part, content analysis was used, and in the quantitative part, interpretive structural modeling was used. The participants in the qualitative part included sports tourists and followers of social media influencers in the field of sports, who were selected using a purposive sampling method and a snowball strategy. Based on theoretical saturation, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted. In the quantitative section, participants included faculty members, managers of tourism companies, members of sports tourism committees, and startup activists, of whom 10 were purposefully selected. Semi-structured interviews were used in the qualitative section and a 12×12 square matrix in the quantitative section to collect data. The assessment of validity and reliability in the qualitative section was carried out with strategies such as believability, transferability, confirmability, and process audit study, and in the quantitative section, face validity and Cohen's kappa index were used.
Findings: Qualitative findings led to the extraction of 57 sub-themes within 12 main themes (audience behavioral expectations, travel-related job behavioral expectations, conveying a favorable destination image to the audience, arousal, audience behavioral tendencies, audience relationship, pervasive cyberspace, audience decision-making assistance, information quality, content quality, influencer influence, and influencer characteristics). Quantitative findings showed that the hierarchical model consists of five levels; “audience behavioral tendencies” is at the highest level, and “pervasive cyberspace” and “influencer characteristics” are at the lowest level. Other factors played a mediating role.
Results: The results of the MiqMaq analysis showed that all factors are in an integrated and correlated structure and none can act independently. The findings of this study indicate that the impact of social media influencers on sports tourist behavior can be explained within the framework of a multilevel model, in which interactions between independent, mediating, and dependent factors play a key role.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Sports management, marketing

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Sport Marketing Studies

Interpretive structural modeling of the influential influence of social media on sports tourist behavior

References

References

Volume 7, Issue 2 - Serial Number 26
May 2026
Pages 1-24

Interpretive structural modeling of the influential influence of social media on sports tourist behavior

References

References

Volume 7, Issue 2 - Serial Number 26May 2026Pages 1-24

Volume 7, Issue 2 - Serial Number 26
May 2026
Pages 1-24