The Social Impact of Events on the Community

Stephanie Talbot
Nov 3 · 6 min read

Welcome to my second blog post about the events industry. In this post we are going to discuss the social impacts of events how they cater to specific groups of people and how this can impact on society. I will look at (Latan‎‎é, 1981) theory of Social impact as well as discussing the positives and negatives within the host community and how to overcome the issue of excluding certain groups of people from these events. The event that I am going to concentrate on is Glasgow pride festival.

Looking at the social impact of events includes looking into how events help change the community. This involves looking at social influence of individuals. Wolf and Latan‎‎é developed the social impact theory in 1981. They define social impact as “ any of the great variety of changes in physiological states and subjective feelings, motives and emotions, cognitions and beliefs, values and behaviour, that occur in human or animal as a result of the real, implied, or imagined presence or actions of other individuals.” (Latan‎‎é and Wolf, 1981). Within this theory it is broken down into 3 forces that have an influence on the social impact of events, these are: the strength, the immediacy and the number of people present. These forces are there to encourage individuals to decide whether to attend the event or not.

This short video quickly summarises this theory.

YouTube 2017

If we look at the Pride Glasgow nowadays compared to when it first started out as Pride Scotia in 2004 we can see that it is now a huge festival that “hosts the largest celebration of its kind in Scotland.”(Pride Glasgow, 2019). Here is a clip of the scale of the event with a wide range of companies marching in support of Pride such as Network Rail and the Co-operative. They still have issues with hate crimes and protests, but the way society is going, Glasgow hopes they can keep improving each year.

Stokes K 2019

When this festival first came about it was simply a support group for people who ‘didn’t belong’ to the norms of society. People wanted to be accepted and not excluded, however being ‘different’ was not widely accepted until very recently. This festival now gives everybody opportunities to be involved and be included. It is a very colourful and flamboyant event which encourages many people to behave in certain ways. Their website is already planning and promoting the 2020 Pride festival. It is now a ticketed event; this indicates that the popularity of the event has increased significantly in order to need crowd control with the use of tickets. We could also look at the pricing of the tickets to back up this thought. The prices for 2019 reported by the BBC “Tickets to enter the charity’s march this year cost LGBT+ groups £120 for a walking group or £420 for commercial organisations, while it costs £600 to have a float at the event.” (BBC News, 2019) shows the popularity and potentials for business increase from attending such an event.

As mentioned, before it is supported by a large range of companies which works well for both the companies and the festival, as they are both being promoted and subconsciously telling individuals to use these brands. This shows a huge change in society in the last 15 years, a lot more people and companies are accepting and even welcoming of the LGBT community.

There is positives and negatives to this event to the Host community as well as the LGBT community. It is the event managers job when organising events such as this, to identify and manage the positives and negatives for both communities. A couple of these are shown in the tables below. The first table is from an academic Bernadette Quinn showing positive and negative impacts of events on communities. The second is my take on how these influence the two communities.

Quinn 2013

The two different communities need to come together and respect each other’s wishes. It is not all about the money worth of the event for these communities. By taking both groups wants and needs into consideration, the event manager can hopefully come up with a solution to reducing the negatives and increasing the positives of the event being held. (Bowdin et al 2012) suggests “using a range of indicators such as percentage of locals that attend, the amount of job / volunteer opportunities, and the percentage of local businesses contributing to the event.” for the event manager to work with the communities when planning future events. Using these indicators in the planning and the evaluation of the annual event can ensure that the best possible outcome is achieved by the event manager. This is backed up by (Getz and Page 2016) stating that “it is not just a security issue, but should integrate public awareness and education, event management including crowd controls, venue design and travel restrictions.”

In conclusion, we have used Glasgow Pride Festival as a prime example of changes in the society and how this event has helped push forward the idea that people are different, but we are all welcome and should support each other. Looking at a few academics to support my thoughts on both the positive and negative impacts this type of event can have on the host community as well as the LGBT community in this case. If the event manager, the event goers and the local community can all work together to create a happy medium then the event is far more likely to be a great success. We have also discussed that society has come a long way, however, there is still people that will possibly protest this event. Hopefully in the years to come Glasgow can throw the biggest and best Pride Festival not only in Scotland but further afield.

References

BBC News, 2019, Union Quits Pride Glasgow event over ‘Commercialisation’ Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-49372559, Date Accessed: 03/11/19

Bowdin G et al, 2012, Events Management, 3rd edition, Routledge, Oxon, New York

Getz D & Page S.J, 2016, Event Studies Theory, research and policy for planned events, 3rd edition, Routledge, Oxon, New York

Latan‎‎é Bibb & Wolf Sharon, 1981, The social Impact of Majorities and Minorities. APA PsycNET Direct, Volume 88 (5)

Pride Glasgow, 2019, Available from: https://prideglasgow.com/, Date accessed: 03/11/19

Psychology explained, 2017, YouTube: Social Impact Theory, Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRxQ-mZ6uFA, Date Accessed: 03/11/19

Quinn Bernadette, 2013, Key Concepts in Event Management, 1st edition, SAGE, LA, London

Stokes Kathrine, 2019, YouTube: Pride Glasgow 2019 (Finish), Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aujGmRxclec, Date Accessed: 03/11/19

Bibliography

BBC News, 2019, Union Quits Pride Glasgow event over ‘Commercialisation’ Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-49372559, Date Accessed: 03/11/19

Bowdin G et al, 2012, Events Management, 3rd edition, Routledge, Oxon, New York

Deery M & Jago L, 2010, Social Impacts of events and the role of anti-social behaviour, Emerald, volume 1, issue 1, pages 8–28

Getz D & Page S.J, 2016, Event Studies Theory, research and policy for planned events, 3rd edition, Routledge, Oxon, New York

Jackson J.M, 1987, Social Impact Theory: A Social forces model of influence in Mullen B, Goethals G.R Theories of group behaviour, Springer Series in Social Psychology, Springer, New York,

Johnston Katy, 2019, The Scottish Sun: Happy Pride, Pride Glasgow 2019, Available from: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/scottish-news/4614812/glasgow-pride-2019-lgbt-march/, Date accessed: 03/11/19

Latan‎‎é Bibb & Wolf Sharon, 1981, The social Impact of Majorities and Minorities. APA PsycNET Direct, Volume 88 (5)

Pink Saltire, 2019, Hate Crime Report, Available from: https://pinksaltire.com/2019/10/16/poll-finds-50-say-lgbt-people-should-avoid-holding-hands-in-public-to-stay-safe/,
Date accessed: 03/11/19

Pride Glasgow, 2019, Available from: https://prideglasgow.com/, Date accessed: 03/11/19

Psychology explained, 2017, YouTube: Social Impact Theory, Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRxQ-mZ6uFA, Date Accessed: 03/11/19

Quinn Bernadette, 2013, Key Concepts in Event Management, 1st edition, SAGE, LA, London

Ria R, Walters P & Rashid T, 2017, Events Management Principles and Practice, 3rd edition, SAGE, LA, London

Small K.E, 2007, Understanding the social impacts of festivals on communities, PDF Thesis, Pages 1–12

Stokes Kathrine, 2019, YouTube: Pride Glasgow 2019 (Finish), Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aujGmRxclec, Date Accessed: 03/11/19

Stephs critical evaluation of the event industry

This blog will enlighten the readers of what goes on behind the scenes of the event industry

Stephanie Talbot

Written by

Stephs critical evaluation of the event industry

This blog will enlighten the readers of what goes on behind the scenes of the event industry

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