UNE’s Kiernan Gordon publishes article in Journal of Sport & Tourism

Kiernan Gordon, Ph.D., assistant professor of sport and recreation management in the Department of Business, has co-authored a paper on sport statuary (sculptures) published in the Journal of Sport & Tourism.

The paper, “Making the intangible tangible in sport heritage: A conceptual analysis of sport statuary’s spatial fix,” was co-authored with Gregory Ramshaw, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at Clemson University. It examines sport statues, a type of tangible immovable sport heritage, through the lens of the ‘spatial fix,’ which is a theoretical construct that originates from economic geography.

The authors identified three themes from the sport statuary literature through the spatial fix lens: marketing implications of sport statuary, location implications of sport statuary, and sport statuary as an instrument to frame symbolic heritage — the latter of which is the overarching theme. Gordon and Ramshaw then explain the value both of sport heritage as a domain worthy of further investigation and the spatial fix as a useful tool for future conceptual and empirical analyses within sport tourism.

Gordon’s research examines the role that emotion plays in sport spectators’ consumption of sport venue and related products. This focus includes a strong emphasis on the influence of security protocol and related technologies on the sport consumer experience, as well as emphases on sport venue design, fan behavior, and heritage sport tourism.