ABSTRACT
All events have impacts (Hall 1997). More specifically, all events or, at least, planned events have a purpose or objective and, hence, intended, desired and predicted (and, on occasion, unanticipated) outcomes. These, in turn, have impacts on host communities, participants and other stakeholders who, as Getz (2007: 300) puts it, are ‘impacted’ by the outcomes of events. Such impacts may be positive or beneficial. Indeed, it is the expected benefits of events, whether economic, social, cultural, political or environmental, that is the principal driver underpinning the support for and increasing popularity of them at the local, national and international scale. Of course, the impacts of events may also be negative. That is, events almost inevitably incur costs or have negative consequences that, to a lesser or greater extent, serve to reduce their net benefit. Thus, a key task for event managers is to not only identify and, as far as possible, predict the impacts of events, but to manage them in such a way that benefits are optimized and negative impacts are minimized so that, ‘on balance the overall impact of the event is positive’ (Bowdin et al. 2006: 37). It is not surprising, therefore, that the academic study of events and event management
has long focused upon the impacts or consequences of events. As Quinn (2009: 487) notes, initial research agendas focused on developing knowledge and understanding of the impacts of events: ‘from early on, events came overwhelmingly to be conceived as discrete entities with an ability to unidirectionally create a series of impacts, both positive and negative, on contextual environments’. What is surprising, perhaps, is that until recently a predominantly economic perspective was in evidence (Formica 1998). In other words, despite early recognition of the wide variety of impacts that might be associated with events (Ritchie 1984), much research focused specifically on their economic consequences, a trend noted by others (Hede 2007; Moscardo 2007). Undoubtedly, this reflected the importance that was, and continues to be, placed upon the role of particular events in urban, rural, regional or national (economic) development and, hence, the need to both justify and measure the returns on often significant financial investment in festivals and events as agents of development (Andranovich et al. 2001). In other words, despite their potential to contribute to, for example, the enhancement of a city’s image (Richards and Wilson 2004) or the development of community cohesion and pride
(Waitt 2003), the success of events is often ultimately assessed according to economic criteria such as income generation, employment generation or the attraction of inward investment (Dwyer et al. 2000). However, two points must immediately be made. First and quite evidently, events are not
always promoted or staged for the economic benefits that they might generate, and nor can their negative consequences be measured simply in economic terms. Indeed, events may often be staged at an economic ‘loss’ when, for example, their costs are covered not by income from participants but by sponsorship or local government funding. In such cases, the desired benefits of the event might be overtly socio-cultural: strengthening community identity and pride (De Bres and Davis 2001), developing social capital (Arcodia and Whitford 2006), increasing local participation in community activities (Ritchie 1984), revitalizing local culture, traditions, and so on. Equally, events may be staged for political purposes (Roche 2000). Frequently, the hosting of international mega-events may be driven by the pursuit of international prestige or legitimacy whilst other events may seek to highlight specific political issues or causes, both ‘Live Aid’ and ‘Live 8’ concerts in 1985 and 2005 respectively being notable examples of the latter. Reference should also be made, of course, to the physical or environmental impacts, both positive and negative, of events. As discussed in Chapter 24, not only may events provide an environmental benefit (for example, improved infrastructure), but also there is a pressing need to manage the environmental impacts of events within a sustainability framework. Second, the impacts of events are neither discrete nor necessarily hierarchical. That is, all
events have a variety of impacts, both positive and negative, some being more immediately evident than others, some being of potentially greater significance than the intended outcomes. For example, a study by Lee and Taylor (2005) found that the sense of national pride engendered by the South Korean national team’s success at the 2002 FIFA World Cup hosted by that country far outweighed the event’s economic returns. Similarly, the annual London Marathon has a major economic impact in terms of the money that participants raise for charity whilst, for the runners themselves, taking part in (and, hopefully, completing) the marathon not only provides a sense of achievement but also, as Shipway and Jones (2008) reveal, is linked to social identity formation. However, the publicity surrounding the event may also have a major influence on encouraging people to take up running and, hence, on longer-term health trends. Together, these points suggest that, in order to fully understand the potential impact of
events, there is a need for more broadly focused research that explores beyond the confines of economic analysis. Indeed, there have long been calls for a more expansive approach to researching events. Moreover, it has been suggested that ‘despite the growth and popularity of festivals and special events, researchers have been very slow in directing research beyond economic impacts’ (Gursoy et al. 2004: 171), there is evidence to suggest that, in more recent years, such a broader perspective has come to be adopted. In particular, the study of events has increasingly embraced the identification, measurement and analysis of their social and cultural impacts, whilst a special issue of the journal Event Management in 2008 focused on events ‘beyond economic impacts’. Nevertheless, this research arguably remains limited both in absolute terms and also, as Fredline and Faulkner (2000) observed over a decade ago, relative to related research focusing on the socio-cultural impacts of tourism (see also Fredline et al. 2003). Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to review contemporary approaches to the study of the social and cultural impacts of events and to explore ways in which our knowledge and understanding of such impacts may be enhanced. First, however, it is useful to consider what, in a generic sense, the social and cultural impacts of events ‘are’ and the different dimensions within which they may be considered.
