Mega Events and Their Impact on Country Image: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis

This bibliometric research reflects the literature available to date on the themes of mega-events – such as sporting events, cultural festivals, and world expos – in creating a country image. For that, a base dataset was set up with 137 papers from Web of Science written from 2000 to 2024 as input for the bibliometric analysis. Analysis demonstrates that the streams of literature focus mostly on sports, tourism, and cultural events. This reveals the fashion of looking for the impact the international mega-events, such as the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, famous music festivals, and expositions, have on shaping the image of the country. Temporal analysis illustrates an increasing trend in the data publications. The most cited works in the field show the power of media coverage in changing the attitude toward tourist destinations and the intentions to visit them. It means that the research contributions are from all the continents; however, with regard to citations, the United States, Australia, and Austria come at the top. The present research takes stock of the current state of academic research and identifies areas important for further research, specifically that are relatively less researched with regard to economic effects and long-term effects associated with hosting international mega events on country image.