The Impact of Music Festivals to Cities: Is Festivals Worth Investing in?

States spend a significant amount of money on financing various cultural events, but they do so without knowing the exact and broader effects of these investments. To deal with this problem, appropriate methods have to be developed to investigate the actual effects of a specific investment. Doing so would allow for qualification of decision making when it comes to public support of cultural events. We investigate following research question: How do we measure the broader effects of a cultural event? Based on an empirical case of a documentary film festival CPH:DOX we investigate the impacts, economic and social, the festival has on the surrounding society. We develop a mixed methods research design consisting of 58 interviews and 987 survey respondents to map both economic effects and what we term societal effects such as raising political awareness or improving civic engagement. We conclude that we do see an economic impact such as the added value from tourism and increased employment as well as we see a social impact, especially in terms affecting CPH:DOX participants cognitively and emotionally. This framework contributes not only with means to evaluate a given cultural event but also to optimize value enhancement. In addition, it can be used to conduct comparisons between cultural events, both nationally and internationally.https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-global-entertainment-business/1246/thumbnail.jp