Most people involved in staging major events have experienced their potential to have positive effects on the people and communities that interact with them. Major events have the power to mobilise large numbers of people and create meaningful impacts on their lives in a number of different ways. At a basic level this might simply be the creation of an enjoyable or pleasurable experience for spectators. At an advanced level this might be the creation of an opportunity that positively changes peoples' long-term behaviour. In either case, these impacts have often been observed anecdotally rather than captured through a structured approach to impact measurement.
The reason for measuring social impacts can often be linked directly to the aims and objectives of the event funders. It is important to recognise that satisfying the objectives of a stakeholder should not offer the only incentive to measure the social impacts of events. Any event organiser should wish to understand how their event impacts on the perceptions and behaviour of people (whether directly or indirectly).
Social impacts are unlikely to happen by chance and must be managed if they are to occur. The starting point in delivering specific social impacts is for an event to have clearly stated aims and objectives that describe the delivery mechanisms by which the planned impacts will occur.
eventIMPACTS has identified four areas of social impacts. These are by no means exhaustive, but they offer a framework which allows many aspects to be covered.