Event Impact Assessment

Impact assessment can be highly technical and complex, requiring a broad knowledge base and diverse skills, but like evaluation, it is a process fraught with philosophical, technical and political perils. Why is it done, by whom, and how, must be carefully planned. Impacts cannot always be ’proven’, so the nature of evidence becomes critical. Accordingly, a strong theoretical base is needed by all IA practitioners. Whilst economic impacts have received a great deal of attention, with sufficient material available to guide all applications, for social, cultural and environmental IA the theory and practice has lagged. In the context of Triple Bottom Line, social responsibility and sustainability approaches most of the available literature is on normative goals (such as going green, meeting sustainability standards), the nature of positive and negative impacts (a descriptive approach or based on public input), or theory about how impacts occur; very little theory development or praxis has been directed at impact assessment for these applied fields. In response to this lack of information, Event Impact Assessment is the first text to: • Develop professionalism for IA and evaluation in these applied management fields. • Position impact assessment within sustainability and responsibility paradigms. • Recommend goals, methods and measures for planning, evaluation and impact assessment pertaining to events and tourism. • Encourage the adoption of standard methods and key performance indicators in evaluation and impact assessment in order to facilitate valid comparisons, benchmarking, reliable forecasts, transparency and accountability. • Provide concepts and models that can be adapted to diverse situations. • Connect readers to the research literature through use of Research Notes and provision of additional readings. This text also works well as a companion text to Event Evaluation: Theory and methods for event management and tourism. The Events Management Theory and Methods Series examines the extent to which mainstream theory is being employed to develop event-specific theory, and to influence the very core practices of event management and event tourism. Each compact volume contains overviews of mainstream management theories and methods, examples from the events literature, case studies, and guidance on all aspects of planned-event management. They introduce the theory, show how it is being used in the events sector through a literature review, incorporate examples and case studies written by...