Identification of Critical Risks in Hosting Sports Mega-Events: A Social Network Perspective

Identifying the potential risks and their influencing factors in hosting sports mega-events can effectively reduce the probability of accident occurrence in the future. However, traditional risk identification primarily focuses on investigating these factors affecting each category of risk individually and ignores the interaction of risks, which leads to poor performance in risk management efficiency. As such, this study first collects a risk list for sports mega-events by means of content analysis using grounded theory, the original data of which comes from 26 research articles and 88 risk management cases. Then a risk network is constructed through the social network analysis (SNA), followed by a quantitative analysis from both the node level and the whole network level. The results indicate that organization and coordination, personnel training, traffic facilities, political conflicts, racial discrimination, and economic crisis are the critical risk factors in hosting sports mega-events. The corresponding suggestions are finally put forward to help organizers control risks at the source, prevent the spread of risk events, and improve efficiency of risk management.