Residents’ Perceptions of the Impacts of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games: Before, During and After the Mega-Event

Abstract This study investigates the residents’ perceptions of Rio de Janeiro regarding the impacts of Rio 2016 Olympic Games. For the first time, a country in South America was chosen to host this megaevent, being a great opportunity to track residents’ perception and cover a gap in longitudinal studies involving residents in developing countries and its impacts on the host city. A face-to-face quantitative survey was conducted over three years, with a total of 1,211 interviewees in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The population perceived positively mainly an improvement in urban mobility and an increase in tourism; but, negatively, the misuse of public resources, increase in prices, and non-lasting legacies that critically affected the image of the destination post-Olympics.