ABSTRACT
Similarly, in sport tourism there has been an ongoing debate as to how to define and classify sport tourists. This debate has generally centred on the issue of active and passive involvement in sport tourism, active referring to taking part in sport while on vacation and passive referring to watching sport (e.g., Hall, 1992; Hinch & Higham, 2001; Standeven & De Knop, 1999). A third form of sport tourism, that of nostalgia sport tourism was hypothesized by Redmond (1991) and refers to visits to such locations as sports halls of fame, stadium tours, or sports themed cruises. Thus, Gibson (1998a) proposed that sport tourism encompasses three types of behaviour and can be defined as “leisure-based travel that takes individuals temporarily outside of their home communities to participate in physical activities [Active Sport Tourism], to watch physical activities [Event Sport Tourism], or to venerate attractions associated with physical activities [Nostalgia Sport Tourism]” (p. 49). Nonetheless, while the discussion over definitions of sport tourism seems to have declined somewhat, an issue that needs to be addressed in this next stage of sport tourism research is how we might better understand and explain sport tourism? Gibson (1998, 2002, 2004) has suggested that one way to achieve this goal is to frame
Weed (2005) is to work inductively and develop grounded theory from our studies of sport tourism. Both inductive and deductive approaches work together and are necessary as we move forward in the next phase of sport tourism scholarship.
