Going East II – Australia

The second leg the journey took place in the Gold Coast, Australia, where I attended the International Event Management Summit, which incorporated the ACEM 5th International Event Management Research Conference (6-7 July) and the 3rd Event Education and Research Network (8 July). I presented two papers, one on event stakeholders and another on festival satisfaction. Below you can find the titles and the abstracts of both papers:


THE FUTURE OF A MARATHON AS PERCEIVED BY ITS STAKEHOLDERS

Caroline Jackson, Miguel Moital and Jenna Le Couillard

This paper is a result of Jenna’s undergraduate dissertation that I supervised. Jenna did very well (she got a first!) and me and Caroline picked up on her work and improved it in order to submit it to the conference. I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to teach some bright students who are able to do research that is good enough for publication. In addition to Jenna’s dissertation, I’ve got two other dissertations that could lead to papers (one definitely will). Not only Jenna’s chosen research topic is very relevant, but she did a very good job developing a creative methodology and collecting good quality primary data.

The aim of her research was to identify if the continuation of the event was supported by its stakeholders and what their objectives were for its future. The research attempted to understand if the stakeholders desired event growth, and if so, in which areas and to what level. Jenna adapted Shoemaker’s (1995) scenario planning process to suit the research. She developed three scenarios that were presented to the stakeholders: a small scale event, medium scale event and large scale event and within these scenarios a range of event features were covered. The overall finding was that the stakeholders wanted to maintain the event and to support its growth. They viewed the Marathon as currently being a small scale event with elements of a medium scale event and saw it growing to become a medium scale with elements of a large scale event. A key finding was that the stakeholders had conflicting views throughout and this was due to their varying backgrounds and objectives for the event. These potential differences will need to be carefully managed by the event organisers if the future development of the event is to be successful.

EXAMINING THE CONTRIBUTION OF EMOTIONS TO FESTIVAL SATISFACTION USING LOGISTIC REGRESSION

Miguel Moital, Caroline Jackson, Mary-Beth Gouthro

This paper is based on a study focusing on festival satisfaction that I am doing together with the two co-authors (and colleagues at BU) of the paper. The reason to write this paper came from the conclusion that past studies on consumer satisfaction have tended to focus on ‘cognitive’ determinants of satisfaction. In other words, they seek explanation to festival satisfaction on a range of specific (more or less tangible) attributes of the festival. Yet, in experience-based products, such as festivals, this may not be sufficient to fully understand the determinants of satisfaction. Emotions are at the centre of experiences and therefore we argue that these should also be incorporated in satisfaction models.

Therefore, in this paper we sought to examine the determinants of festival satisfaction and to understand the extent to which emotion is a determinant of festival satisfaction. Using the Beach Break Live Festival (UK) as a case study and logistic regression as the analytical technique, the results show that emotions do contribute to explaining festival satisfaction in addition to cognition. Moreover, positive emotions were the single most important determinant of overall satisfaction. Satisfaction with Food & Drink, Staff, Facilities and Information & Organisation were also found to influence participants’ satisfaction. We conclude by discussion implications for theory and practice.

If you wish to receive a copy of any of these papers, send me an email to mmoital@bournemouth.ac.uk

My colleagues Dorothy Fox, Debbie Sadd and Richard Shipway also presented papers at this conference (Yes, BU was the foreign university with the largest representation at the conference).

Dorothy presented a paper on The contribution of an events programme to sustainable heritage conservation: a study of the National Trust in England. The paper, co-authored with Nicola Johnson, explores the various ways in which the National Trust’s programme of events has been developed to contribute to sustainable heritage conservation. The method they used for this case study consisted of the collection and analysis of both primary and secondary data. The former obtained through in-depth interviews with key personnel within the National Trust, with secondary data from the National Trust and other sources used in support. The findings show the Trust’s events play a vital role in educating the public in sustainability, in respect of both natural and cultural heritage. The interview participants revealed that the events are conceived in two main ways – first, a topdown approach whereby events relate to a national organisational campaign and secondly, events which develop from the bottom-up and reflect the uniqueness of each of the Trust’s properties. This study therefore extends the prevailing approach to events and sustainable development by considering the very positive contribution of an events programme to heritage conservation, which has implications for other conservation bodies throughout the world.

Dorothy

Debbie’s presentation, entitled London 2012 – Will it be regeneration or renaissance in times of financial crisis? (co-authored with Ian Jones), focussed on the ‘regeneration’ that is proposed for the residents in the area of the Olympic Park developments in the Lower Lea Valley in London. The study (undertaken as part of her PhD) is based upon the detailed examination of two past Games and their impacts upon the local residents of the Olympic venues, in Sydney, 2000 and Barcelona 1992. The study evaluates the impacts of the planning for London 2012 to date on the local residents through in-depth, semi-structured interviews. This study also examines the impact of the global credit crisis upon the legacy planning and highlights some of the impacts already being seen with regard to the changes being made by the Olympic Delivery Authority to the original bid documentation.

Debbie

Richard presented a paper entitled Sporting events, distance running and the ‘third place’. His paper, based on his doctoral studies, adds to the limited body of knowledge on sports events by exploring the social world of active sports event participants. In his paper, the experiences of active sports event participants are explored at a selection of international distance running events. Preliminary results suggest that a key aspect of the sports event experience is that the event provides access to a social environment of like-minded people, especially within the event setting. Within these research results, the key emerging theme and direction of this study is to explore the role of sporting events as a ‘third place’ outside of the home and work environment.

Richard :-)

On the last day of the conference, the BU team met a number of academics from Victoria University. Professor Leo Jago is a visiting professor at BU, and we took this opportunity to discuss possible projects between academics of the two institutions.

Academic staff from Victoria University and Bournemouth University

After the conference, I stayed in the area for a two week holiday. My first stop was New Zealand. I will post about it over the next few days.