Investigating the Effect of Leisure Time's Perceived Risks on Sports Tourists’ Social Happiness During COVID_ 19 Pandemic

This descriptive study sought to investigate the effect of leisure time's perceived risks on the sports tourists’ social happiness during the COVID_ 19 Pandemic using the structural equation model. The study’s statistical population comprised all tourists who used sports tourism complexes in Mashhad, out of whom 381 people were selected via purposive sampling. The required data were collected via Ishraqi et al’ (2017) perceived risks questionnaire and the oxford social happiness scale. The questionnaires’ face and content validities were confirmed by experts, and their construct validity was confirmed via exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, the questionnaires’ reliability, obtained through Cronbach's alpha, was found to be over 0.7. As for analyzing the data, descriptive and inferential statistics such as one-sample T-test and structural equation modeling were used. The study’s results indicated a significant difference between the mean perceived risk components, the tourists’ happiness, and the theoretical mean. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between perceived risk components and the tourist's happiness during the COVID_ 19 Pandemic. Therefore, it is emphasized that factors such as supervision, planning, hardware, security, information provision, organizational matters, and internationally recognized methods be considered in setting sports tourism policies to prevent the psychological consequences of COVID_ 19 and achieve perfect social happiness.