Other- versus Self-Referenced Social Impacts of Events: Validating a New Scale

Marijke Taks, Daichi Oshimi and Nola Agha
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Marijke Taks: Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada
Daichi Oshimi: Department of Sport & Leisure Management, Tokai University, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa 259-1292, Japan

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-22

Abstract: Publicly funded sport events are partially justified based on positive social impacts. Past research generally measured social impact for a generic and global “other” with claims such as “Events create new friendships in the community”. These other-referenced (OR) social impacts are generally higher pre-event than post-event and are inflated for both methodological and theoretical reasons. In the pre-event period of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we empirically tested OR items compared to self-referenced (SR) items, such as “Because of the event, I create new friends in the community” and allowed projection bias to vary between scales. Results of the experiment between an OR-Social Impact Scale (OR-SIS) and a similar SR-SIS confirmed OR-measures to be significantly higher than SR-measures. While artificially inflated OR scores may be useful for event organizers and politicians to gain support for hosting, estimates based on circumscribed self (SR) are a methodologically appropriate measurement of social impact.

Keywords: media framing; olympic and paralympic games; projection bias; public discourse; recency bias; Tokyo 2020 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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