ECONOMC IMPACTS OF APPALACHIAN FESTIVALS

Festivals and special events provide excitement, fun, and art, cultural and heritage entertainment in communities and other recreational settings throughout the nation at an expand rate. Several approaches ranging from pure guesswork to complex mathematical models are used to estimate community-based festival and special event economic impacts. This paper intends to reduce the ambiguity in assessing the economic impact of a community-based festival. The paper intends to answer: How can the average person understand these economic impact studies sufficiently to separate good studies from bad ones. How can the average person make informed choices