The Value of Events

Erik Lundberg, John Armbrecht, Tommy D. Andersson, Donald Getz, Erik Lundberg, John Armbrecht, Tommy D. Andersson, Donald Getz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317193234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

The Value of Events fills an important niche in the literature on events, being the first book to comprehensively deal with the subject of value creation and measurement, as opposed to impact assessment and programme evaluation. Value creation and measurement is often done routinely from specific perspectives such as tourism, event management, corporate marketing, or customer satisfaction. However, there exist a number of discourses on value and evaluation that have not yet received adequate attention, including the justification of governmental intervention and the costs and benefits of hosting major events.

This edited book, written by an international group of academics with expertise in the relevant fields of events, tourism, sport and culture, offers new insight into events and their relationship to sustainability, social responsibility, cultural and social value. Fostering debate in the context of conceptual thinking, philosophising, multiple stakeholder perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches, it challenges the events industry, students, policy-makers and strategists with new perspectives on value, with implications for impact forecasting and assessment.

This is a book for all students pursuing degrees in fields where planned events are important topics, while being of great interest to researchers, policy-makers, evaluators and organisers/managers of planned events. Within a subject in need of further attention, The Value of Events offers the most comprehensive overview of event value to date.

1 Definitions and meanings of value

Donald Getz, Tommy D. Andersson, John Armbrecht and Erik Lundberg

This chapter gives an introduction to The Value of Events and sets the stage for subsequent contributions by providing an overview of the most fundamental concepts. We start with definitions that can be found in most dictionaries, including examples of how terms are used in the context of events. This is followed by a general discussion of extrinsic versus intrinsic approaches to assigning value, drawing on economics and other disciplinary perspectives. Particular attention is given to planned events and a model for exploring extrinsic and intrinsic values is presented. Building on this model, the chapter elaborates on the important objects and subjects of study.

Introduction

Events have been studied from many disciplinary perspectives, including history, psychology, health, anthropology, sociology, heritage studies, economics and cultural studies. Looking upon events as representing institutionalised cultural phenomena, for example, allows us to apply theories of value from these disciplines to enrich the discourse on planned events and their contemporary roles (Armbrecht, 2014). The point is that value is not restricted to one or a few disciplines, even though economic approaches have been paramount in the event-specific literature.

The editors and contributors understand that valuing events (as in determining their overall or cumulative worth) is inherently subjective. These subjective evaluations may have the character of both qualitative and explorative descriptions and quantitative inputs. And we take a multi-stakeholder approach, looking at event value through the eyes of producers, consumers, residents, destinations and others involved in event production or those who are impacted by events.

Impact assessment, which is a major theme in the events literature, is in itself not evaluation but rather a method, or group of techniques, intended to reveal important information about the outcomes of events such as the economic contribution of event tourism or the social impacts of holding a festival. Impact assessments can be used to assess, compare or discuss different aspects of value. The exercise of impact assessment therefore has implications for event strategy formulation, public and private policies, as well as public planning. A better understanding of the impacts of events will improve the forecasting and evaluation of potential impacts, which are necessary when, for example, taking decisions about whether or not to bid on or support an event.

While understanding and describing value of one particular event is desirable, an even more urgent and complicated issue is to understand the value of portfolios of events that are important within many policy fields and industry strategies, and whole populations of events within cities and countries. The continuing expansion of the events sector, and of all types of events in terms of size and significance, reflects their legitimation in terms of government policies and industry strategies. As well, people expect their cities and countries to be eventful, offering many choices. There is, therefore, no question about how valuable planned events are in general terms – they are clearly highly valued all around the world. That observation, however, does not detract from the need to examine perspectives on value, its measurement and related discourses, in order to secure that public and private resources are invested carefully.

Definitions

In this section we start with dictionary definitions and terminology, including examples of how value-related terms are used in the events field. But this provides only superficial understanding of the issues, so it is followed by an exploration of meanings. It is clear that two inter-related streams of meaning exist, often referred to as “intrinsic” versus “extrinsic” approaches, and they are underpinned by philosophical as well as practical considerations.

According to Ng and Smith (2012), there are two relevant distinct meanings of ‘value’. The first pertains to a person’s or group’s values, based on culture and ethics, influencing what a person becomes and does. In this sense, values determine (at least in part) attitudes towards events or tourism, and values influence what a group or society does by way of organising and facilitating (or regulating) planned events. Several definitions and usages of the concept of value in the events context have been explored (Brown et al., 2015). However, Brown et al. mainly examined evaluation theory and praxis rather than value concepts in general.

In surge for synonyms for the noun ‘value’, one may think of terms such as ‘worth’, ‘utility’, ‘advantage’, ‘benefit’, ‘profit’, ‘merit’ and ‘usefulness’. These suggest how the value of an event might be determined, but raise the question ‘by whom’ or ‘from whose perspective’? Closely related to the noun ‘value’ is the term ‘evaluation’. Robson (2000) observed: “Dictionary definitions refer to evaluation as assessing the value (or worth, or merit) of something. The ‘something’ focused on here is some kind of innovation, or intervention, or project, or service” (p. 8).

The ‘something’ in our case would be an event. Thus the definition of evaluation is proposed to be the assessment of the value of an event. However, the term ‘evaluation’ is not generally used in that way. Professional event managers, tourism strategists and policy-makers using events instrumentally are frequently concerned with evaluating policies, programmes and events in terms of proving cause and effect (e.g. did an event attract tourists or foster social integration?), or are preoccupied with the evaluation of management functions and personnel within an organisation, as that is essential for improving efficiency and effectiveness. Much of the literature concerns these forms of evaluation, but we argue that they serve to generate inputs to the broader determination of worth or merit.

Allen et al. (2011) offer a definition of event evaluation that encompasses the main aims of programme evaluation and management-system evaluation: “Event evaluation is the process of critically observing, measuring and monitoring the implementation of an event in order to assess its outcomes accurately” (p. 492). The authors of this definition said it is a continuous process that embodies pre-event feasibility studies, monitoring and control of event operations, and post-event evaluation that focuses on measuring outcomes and determining ways to improve the event.

The verbal form is ‘evaluate’. To evaluate signifies the process of actually assigning and measuring the value of events. This process may include qualitative descriptions, but often focuses on how to measure the value of events.

In its adverbial form, it is common practice to refer to an event as being operated profitably, usefully, or valuably. As an adjective, we can call an event ‘valuable’ as a business or tourist asset, or worthy of public support. Employing any of these terms can greatly influence one’s perception of an event, as illustrated in Figure 1.1.

Discourse on the value of events, or the worthwhileness of public support, is common around the world. In recent years, we have witnessed protests against the huge expenditure associated with mega events, riots surrounding political events (the event in these cases is a platform) and considerable debate regarding the relative merits of government intervention. The populations of Munich and Hamburg have even voted against using public resources for staging the Olympic games.

A major aim of this book is to advance discourse on the value, worth or merit of events from multiple perspectives. This has implications for research, which has traditionally been dominated by a positivistic paradigm stressing the measurement of impacts, with economics, management and marketing concerns being predominant.

Conceptualisation of value within an event context

A number of disciplinary approaches are relevant when conceptualising the value of events. For example, religious or spiritual value refers to the context in which events are perceived. Indigenous events may represent specific religious traditions for particular tribes or cultural groupings. Spiritual-specific outcomes are enlightenment or deeper inner insight and understanding. Pilgrimage, in this light, has value that enters the realm of the transcendental. To many people the religious rites, rituals and symbols incorporated into events (or constituting the event) cannot be challenged without committing sacrilege, which can give rise to tension and conflict between groups with different value systems.

Figure 1.1 Definitions of ‘value’ and related terms.

Source: Brown et al. (2015).

An alternative to taking a religious stance is to base values on philosophical positions, such as secular humanism. This ties in with ethics and beliefs about what is inherently right or wrong. For example, many people believe in ‘live and let live’ or tolerance, which gives rise to acceptance of many other opinions and values. Aesthetics, and notions of what is beautiful or what art is, can be based on a philosophical position or world view.

Principles of sustainability are, at least in part, based on philosophical or religious positions, such as the necessity for stewardship of the planet’s natural resources and its diverse life forms. When it comes to discourse on sustainable development and green events, underlying values cannot be ignored. An event might be judged to be inherently good or bad according to one’s belief in the precautionary principle or a blanket condemnation of blatant consumption and revelry. Alternatively, an event might be valued for its stance on environmentalism, regardless of its programme and setting.

From a sociological perspective, value or bundles of values are capital (Bourdieu, 1973; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). Events can be regarded as facilitating and catalysing social interaction and social networks among individuals as well as groups of people. This development represents what some authors would describe as social capital. Throsby (2001) describes social value as “the sense of connection with others” (p. 29) that an experience may create. While some researchers consider the number of contacts to be most important, other researchers point to the significance of the strength of the ties (Granovetter, 1983; Lin, 2001).

Another outcome of events is their educational benefit. Both knowledge and skills can be results of events and festivals. Lipe (1984) refers to the learning effect as informational value, whereas the Burra Charter (ICOMOS, 1999) and English Heritage (1997) describe them as educational and academic value. Mykletun (2009), in a festival context, refers to the same phenomenon as building human capital.

Historical value is primarily related to historical and cultural events. The historical significance represents events’ connection to the past, affecting individuals’ identity today. While historical value represents the connection to the past, symbolic value is the ability of an event to reflect conditions of life in the past and the extent to which they throw light on the present. The stronger the connection, the stronger is the sense of continuity. Throsby discusses symbolic value and its ability to conveying “cultural meaning” (Throsby, 2001, p. 112).

To anthropologists and cultural sociologists events can be read as a text that illuminates cultural values and social structures. The concept of anthropological exchange is relevant, as it emphasises the power of symbolism as opposed to tangible, economic exchanges. Cultural capital is described as obtained knowledge and competence to interpret and make sense of cultural representations (Mahar et al., 1990). Cultural capital is, for example, a vehicle to decode works of art (Bourdieu, 1968); it is the result of repeated, learned consumption, formal education or inheritance from parents. Throsby (2010) also used the term ‘cultural capital’ to represent “an asset which embodies, stores or provides cultural value in addition to whatever economic value” (p. 46) a cultural service or product may possess.

To understand the value of heritage, Mason (2002) developed a typology which has r...