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Introduction
The overall purpose of this paper is to examine the meanings, methods, and practice of event evaluation, with the aim of advancing both discourse and praxis. This is undertaken primarily by means of literature review and concept development, leading to conclusions with a suggested research agenda.
Evaluation is, in part, an essential management function of information gathering and feedback through which processes can be improved, goals more effectively attained, and by which organizations can learn and adapt. To “evaluate” is also to place a value on something, or to pass judgment on its quality, effectiveness, or worth. Impact assessment is not the same as evaluation, nor is pure research; evaluation occurs within policy, planning, and decision-making processes and is therefore often political in nature. The impacts most researched, discussed, and used by government agencies and funding authorities are almost exclusively economic in nature – though there has been a recent shift toward the inclusion of socio-cultural impacts and a triple bottom line (TBL) approach – but these are a sub-set of an more comprehensive and holistic approach – that can be collectively described as “event evaluation.”
Despite recognition of evaluation’s vital role in policy making, managerial improvement, and event design, it has been a minor theme in the literature on planned events. Clifton et al. (2012, p. 89), following an evaluation of festivals in the UK, argued that “in a culture of evidence-based decision making, reliable, and robust evaluation is also essential.” Their review concluded that serious weaknesses occurred in the context of evaluating public-policy initiatives related to events: a lack of prioritization, advocacy presented as evaluation, and poor quality reporting; complex and politically sensitive objectives are difficult to objectify, while evaluation itself has been under-resourced or viewed as optional.
In the literature review it is demonstrated that event scholars and practitioners have been preoccupied with economic impact assessment, although the trend is definitely to take a longer-term perspective on the value of events and their legacies within a TBL framework. This concern is now expanding to consider managed portfolios and entire populations of events, which compounds evaluation problems. Progress has been stalled in part by the predominance of economic impact assessments and a lack of theory and methodological advancement in the other outcome...