Research in doping has focused on potential intervention strategies, increasingly targeting predicting factors. Yet, findings are inconsistent, mostly athlete-centred and explain only limited variances in behaviour. This critical review aims to (a) summarize studies that identified predictors of doping intentions, susceptibility, and behaviour in elite athletes and to (b) analyse in how far previous research included aspects beyond athlete-centred approaches, such as context and sporting culture. We reviewed 14 studies that focused on elite athletes. Situational temptation, attitudes, and subjective norms seem to be strong predicting variables of doping intentions (r ≥ 0.50), but intention was no predictor for behaviour. Attitudes were a significant predictor for both, doping susceptibility (r = 0.47) and behaviour (r = 0.30). Most of the predictors are athlete-centred and ignore macro-level factors that might help to explain how certain individual traits impact on the decision making process. The findings from this review call for a critical discussion of whether current doping-prevention research needs to take new directions. We propose future research to bridge findings of psychologists and sociologists, as it appears that doping behaviour cannot be explained by ignoring the one or the other. Impacts of sporting culture that have been identified in qualitative approaches need to be integrated in future quantitative approaches to test for its external validity. Inclusion of both, micro- and macro level factors may enable an integrative prevention program that creates a sporting culture without doping.

The link between sports and tourism has been widely researched. In this context, many studies have focused on sports event (SEs), finding that SEs provide a multitude of opportunities but also face many challenges at a local level. Despite the academic interest in the sports event tourism field, there is still little synthesis and no overview of research directions. Therefore, we proposed answering three research questions (RQs): What do we know today about the tourism perspectives of sports events? (RQ1); What are the main tourism implications of a sports event? (RQ2); What are the most and least investigated streams of research in this specific field of study? (RQ3). To answer these questions we conducted a systematized literature analysis including worldwide literature published between June 2000 and October 2020. Based on the findings, we provided insights into six clusters and their characteristics and highlighted major avenues to describe how SEs provide unique assets for tourism host destinations. Finally, we drew attention to important implications for future research, particularly in the context of the role of events for tourism recovery in the post-COVID-19 time.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) lacks candidates willing to host the Olympic Games (OG) and has reacted to this situation by introducing the Olympic Agenda 2020 (OA)—a reform process making the OG more attractive for potential hosts. This study analyzes whether the OA plays a crucial role for the future of the OG. We, therefore, examined the official IOC documents and feasibility studies of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games (WOG) bidders and conducted qualitative interviews with experts in the field (n = 15). The results reveal that the 2026 WOG hosts plan to reduce the budgets for the organization and the infrastructure costs in the host regions. As a consequence, the number and nature of the sites and venues as well as the distances between them will increase. This means that the future Olympic heritage (OH) may lay less in iconic buildings but rather focus on the attempt to fulfil the city’s long-term strategies. Our analyses extend the literature by: (1) analysing the OA in view of future OG, (2) comparing experiences from past OG with those of current bidders, (3) integrating expert knowledge thanks to qualitative interviews and, finally, (4) considering new heritage concepts.

Small-scale events represent an important asset for the development of tourist destinations. As local stakeholders play a major role in conceptualizing and developing small-scale events, this study sheds light upon stakeholders’ perceptions toward such events. The current study was carried out through qualitative interviews based on the case of the FIS (International Ski Federation) World Junior Alpine Ski Championships 2019. The findings of this study reveal that for small-scale event success, the involvement of local stakeholders in the decision-making process is key. Furthermore, stakeholder involvement makes the decision-making processes when staging an event more effective across all organizational phases. The findings invite event managers and policy makers to involve local stakeholders in the organization processes of small-scale events. The research on small-scale events is enriched by the evidence that partial involvement of the stakeholders in the organizational processes reaches a limit in what Freeman ( 2010 ) describes as “stakeholder management capacity”.