What Are People's Wishes toward the Mega-event? A Content Analysis of the Website of International Horticultural Exposition 2011 Xi'an China

Abstract

Mega-event,such as Olympics and World Expo,has significant impacts on individuals and the host destination,which has been the hot topic in event management area.The increasing prevalence of Internet provides an avenue for the public to express their feelings,wishes,and understandings,even complaints,associated toward the mega-event online,which are reflected as one impact of the event on them.This research attempts to explore such impacts by using the Internet Users'(IUs') Sentences(WSs) on the Wishing Wall Sub Site of International Horticultural Exposition,2011,Xi'an(Expo 2011 Xi'an China) official website.Based on the Personal Construct Theory,the present study employs the ROST WordParser software to analyze 1527 WSs before the opening and 866 WSs after the opening.The content analysis results in 50 high frequency Words(WWs),which could be grouped into six categories,including the event itself,the event's scale and impacts,the event's subject,people-self,place,and people-others.According to the relationship between the categories and the different perceived objects,the paper proposes a conceptual model of mega-event's impacts on Chinese internet users manifested on their online postings.The model includes two dimensions and three layers of group connections.The two dimensions refer to theme-content and scale-level;the three layers of connections include people/self-the event-place,people/self-the event-people/others structure,and people/self-the event structure.The study also finds that the IUs online postings on the Expo 2011 could be differentiated by geographical locations,consanguinity,and kinship tendency.They strongly link themselves to the host destination,the family,as well as the event itself.Comparative analysis of the WWs before and after the Expo 2011 opening shows that:(1) IUs provided the same level of concerns with the host place before and after the opening;(2) after the opening the IUs expressed stronger loves/responsibilities of family than before the opening;(3) IUs tended to see themselves as the hosts of the event before the opening,while after the opening they see themselves as guests.In addition,the Chinese IUs presented the tendency of appreciating the scale-level more than theme of the event,indicating that event operation and management in China to a certain extent is still in the industrial stage.The media often consciously or unconsciously report the unreal events to the public.The local governments of the host destination tend to emphasize events symbolic meaning while overlooking the exact theme of the event.In addition,the findings indicate the similar understandings of events between the public and the media,which may be affected by political and cultural forces.The article concludes with some managerial implications for the event host destination and event planners,and also discusses some topics for further study such as,select different types of mega-event in order to further investigate the impacts of event theme on IUs,manifested in their online postings,study the personal expectations and perception of the same mega-event in different cultural settings.