Spatial spillovers of sport industry clusters and community resilience: Bridging a spatial lens to building a smart tourism city

Given the impact of COVID-19 on socioeconomic conditions, community resilience (the adaptive capability in response to adverse events through possessing or using community resources) has become an increasingly critical agenda in communities. In the context of resilience, a smart tourism city could be a solution for enhancing community resilience. Thus, it is important to identify available community resources to help people cope with adversity, which can contribute to the overriding goal of a smart tourism city. To do this, we aim to provide empirical evidence on the spatial spillover effects of sport industry clusters as community resources on community resilience to advance the building of a resilient smart tourism city. Using spatial econometric modeling with spatial data, we measure the spatial spillover effects of sport industry clusters on community resilience in the United States. The findings reveal the significant spatial spillover effects of sport industry clusters on community resilience within a specific region and across surrounding regions. The findings of this study provide policymakers and practitioners with spatial information on regional sport industry clusters as community resources that are locally bound and specialize in smart tourism and planning to enhance community resilience.