Assessing the Social Impacts of Events: Scale Development

Tourism destination managers are increasingly looking at events as an important mechanism for enhancing tourism development in their regions (Jago & Shaw, 1998). Whilst it is clear that events have the potential to generate positive economic impacts, a balanced appraisal of the success of an event needs to consider the total cost/benefit package including social impacts. Unlike economic impacts, social impacts of events can be difficult to measure objectively as many of them cannot be quantified, and they often have a differential effect on different members of the community. For this reason, social impacts are frequently examined through investigation of residents' perceptions of the impacts (Fredline, 2000). Little research, however, has undertaken a systematic evaluation of these social impacts and the aim of this CRC for Sustainable Tourism study, is to provide a framework within which to assess these impacts.\ud This paper documents the processes involved in developing a scale to be used in assessing the social impacts of three different events. The development process began with a review of literature to generate items. Items generated through focus groups supplemented this process. The overall aim of the studies is to test and validate an instrument that can be used to compare the social impacts of a variety of events and ultimately to inform knowledge in the area of social impact assessment in tourism more generally