Spatio-Temporal Network Analysis of the Impact of Mega Event-Based Development: The 2018 Winter Olympic Host City (Gangneung, South Korea) Case

Abstract

Background and objective: Although mega-events are generally expected to have both short-and long-term lastingfavorable effects on host cities, few quantitative studies have investigated this impact based on demand-orientedevidences and through a phased data collection. This study examines the case of Gangneung, a Winter Olympic host city,in order to identify the extent to which the effects of the Olympics are durable. Methods: City map survey was conducted 48 times for 527 visitors for a year and half for visitation pattern observation. Inorder to investigate the temporal impact of the Olympic event and seasonality, attraction visitation network for sevenperiods are compared based on using Network density comparison analysis. In addition, a regression analysis-a QAP(Quadratic Assignment Procedure) was followed to examine different factors affecting network formation. Results: As the Winter Olympics were taking place mainly around the Olympic Park, the visitation network results displayedvery strong connections among the Olympic park, the Northern coast, and the Southern city’s downtown. However, exceptthe major connections, all other connecting strengths were presented with noticeably weaker strengths when comparedto the pre-Olympic period. After the Olympics, the edge strengths were restored to levels similar to those of thepre-Olympic period and, the most noticeable change was the reduced gap between the strongest and weakest attractiongroup, indicating that the edge strengths tend to distribute equally. Another change was that the strengths of connectionsto the Olympic Park became stronger, indicating that the Olympic legacy was included as one of the touristic attractions. The results of the following season indicated that the connections among the Northern and Eastern coasts, the Westernhistorical sites, and the Southern downtown area remained strong and connections to the downtown became moreprominent with new powerful attraction points. Conclusion: The longitudinal observations revealed that there is a noticeable durable impact of hosting the Olympics. Tosome extent, Olympic hosting and the KTX railway construction seem to have changed tourist visitation patterns. Althoughthe results warn that the expectation of spillover and durable effect can be hasty, the following results imply that theredevelopment project induced by a mega event has brought the changes and reorganized the travel pattern in small city. This also provides evidence that mega-event impact sometimes lags behind the city government and local community’sschedule, which explains the need for a long-term evaluation.