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Encore Festival and Event Evaluation Kit: Review and Redevelopment

This was the first of a two stage project to review and redesign the STCRC ENCORE Festival and Event Evaluation Kit (ENCORE). The purpose of this project was to provide a critique of the current ENCORE product and make recommendations to guide the STCRC in future design and development of a revised model. The current ENCORE model provides a sound measure of direct inscope expenditure but could be expanded to include social and environmental dimensions to achieve a triple bottom line (TBL) approach. Academics who have used the current model have reported that it is sound, reliable and useful. In contrast, the majority of event organisers who have purchased and trialled the product report that the current model is too complex for comfortable and effective use by their event evaluation staff. The findings indicate that the majority of organisers of smaller festivals and events do not have access to personnel with the level of research skills and resources required to complete an effective event evaluation without ongoing support and training (which wasn’t perceived to be widely available with the current model). A revised paper-based event evaluation tool was developed and field tested at the 2010 CountryLink Parkes Elvis Festival. The model incorporated a TBL approach and included comprehensive community, attendee and organiser survey instruments for measuring host community perceptions of the social impacts of the event, motivations for and satisfaction with attending the event, and inscope expenditure. The instruments also facilitated the collection of demographic and marketing data, and an environmental checklist was completed by organisers. Interviews with field researchers and organisers and examination of the data resulted in minor modifications to the proposed tool. It is recommended that the STCRC facilitate the development of a web-based event evaluation tool with a user-friendly interface and user access to ongoing training and support. While much of the questionnaire content has been field tested as part of this study, we recommend that further development of the new tool involve extensive field testing among event evaluation researchers to ensure its usability in the event marketplace. A web-based tool has the potential to contribute to the collection of data from a broad range of events, providing an extensive database for academics, NTOs and STOs involved in research, planning and policy making for the Australian/global events industry. Acknowledgements The Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre, established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre’s Program, funded this research. The authors are very appreciative of the assistance and contribution provided by the Industry Reference Group. Thanks are due to Ms Elizabeth Rich (Chief Executive Officer – Business Events Council of Australia), Ms Sandra Garvin (Manager Regional Development Program – Queensland Events), Mr James Paterson (Head of Strategy, Research and Legal – Events NSW), and Mr Brendan McClements (Chief Executive Victorian Major Events Company), each of whom shared industry knowledge and provided guidance for this project. Special thanks to Kelly Hendry (Tourism Manager, Parkes Shire Council), Katrina Dwyer (Events Coordinator, Parkes Shire Council) and Ellie Ruffoni (Parkes Elvis Festival Coordinator) for assistance with testing the new ENCORE tools. Finally, thank you to the ENCORE users who provided feedback for this research. 1 Inscope expenditure, also referred to as ‘new expenditure’ is “expenditure that would not have occurred in the host region had the event not taken place” (Jago & Dwyer, 2006, p. 8). This includes the event-induced expenditure of a range of stakeholders in the event, such as event attendees, participants, exhibitors and organisers.