The social impacts of the Carnival in Aalborg A quantitative event social impact study Master thesis by: Ingólfur Magnússon Title page MA in Tourism 10th semester Aalborg University Supervisor Szilvia Gyimóthy Hand-in: July 30th, 2010 Contains 189089 characters with spaces = 78.8 pages I herby state that this thesis is based on my own studies, written by me and has not previously, whole or partially, been submitted for a higher degree. _________________________________________ Ingólfur Magnússon Study nr. 20081255 Abstract The purpose of this research was to study the residents of Aalborg attitudes toward the social impacts of the Carnival in Aalborg. Aalborg is a city in Northern Jutland, Denmark and the Carnival it hosts in May, every year, claims to be the biggest one in Northern Europe. There are some known problems surrounding the Carnival, the most obvious being general messiness. Police officials have raised the idea to move the Carnival out of the city centre due to its increasing size and related problems. Another aim was to find out if the perceptions of the residents of Aalborg toward the Carnival vary by differences in demographic sub groups. Finally it was examined if residents’ views about various other aspects of life in the city influence their perceptions toward the Carnival in Aalborg. Quantitative research methodology was applied in this study. Data was gathered with aid of a questionnaire which was based on a previously developed tool called Festival Social Impact Attitude Scale. The sample of the research was acquired via non-random sampling method which resulted in one hundred thirty eight completed questionnaires. Respondents were asked to indicate their expectations and values toward twenty four social impacts. Analysis of the responses was mainly based on the expectations toward the social impacts. In order to simplify and to identify underlying dimensions in the data, factor analysis was performed. Two main factors were identified, social benefits and social costs. The result of the analysis revealed that the respondents had moderate to high expectation toward community benefits as well as being of moderate to high importance to them. In contrast the respondents had rather low expectation toward individual benefits and they were mainly of moderate to low importance to them. Finally, the respondents had moderate expectations toward social costs but it was mostly of rather low importance to them apart from one impact, littering. The study also showed that differences exist between some demographic sub-groups perceptions on the Carnival in Aalborg. Finally it was discovered that respondents’ views to other aspects of life in the city causes difference in their perceptions. It is the authors believe that this study can help the organizers of the Carnival in Aalborg to plan an even better carnival in the future as they can now use the results of this study to identify in which areas they were are performing well and in which areas improvement is needed. Keywords: Carnival Social impacts Community benefits Individual benefits Social costs i Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank my master thesis supervisor, Associate professor, PhD Szilvia Gyimóthy for her guidance through this long and hard process. Klaus Bystrup, CEO of the Carnival in Aalborg, I would like to thank four providing me with information and data regarding the carnival. The questionnaire used in this study would not have sounded so good if fellow student, Anne Kondrup, would not have taken time from her own thesis writings to help me translate it to comprehensible Danish. Thank you Anne. I want thank my wife, Tinna, for her help in the final steps of the writings and last but not least I would like to thank my children, whom have hardly seen their father during the summer holiday, for their incredible patience and understanding, especially during the last steps. ii Table of Contents Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... iii Table of Figures ......................................................................................................................... v List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. vi 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 2 Methods .............................................................................................................................. 6 2.1 Case study .................................................................................................................... 6 2.2 The Festival Social Impact Attitude Scale .................................................................. 6 2.3 Sampling and data collection ....................................................................................... 8 2.4 Limitations ................................................................................................................. 11 3 Events ............................................................................................................................... 13 3.1 Types of events .......................................................................................................... 14 3.2 Planned events ........................................................................................................... 15 3.2.1 Functions of planned events ............................................................................... 15 3.2.2 Typology of planned events ............................................................................... 16 3.3 Festivals ..................................................................................................................... 17 3.4 Event tourism ............................................................................................................. 17 3.4.1 Events as attractions ........................................................................................... 18 3.4.2 Events as animators ............................................................................................ 18 3.4.3 Events as image-makers ..................................................................................... 19 3.4.4 Events and Place marketing ............................................................................... 19 3.4.5 Events as Catalyst ............................................................................................... 19 4 Impacts of tourism ............................................................................................................ 21 4.1 Economic impacts ...................................................................................................... 22 4.2 Environmental impacts .............................................................................................. 24 iii 4.3 Cultural impacts ......................................................................................................... 24 4.4 Social impacts ............................................................................................................ 26 5 The Carnival in Aalborg ................................................................................................... 35 6 Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 44 6.1 Factor Analysis .......................................................................................................... 45 6.2 One-Way Anova ........................................................................................................ 52 6.2.1 Marital status ...................................................................................................... 52 6.2.2 Number of times participated in the Carnival .................................................... 55 6.2.3 Duration of residency in Aalborg ....................................................................... 57 6.2.4 Place of residence in Aalborg ............................................................................. 59 6.2.5 Satisfaction with the place of residence ............................................................. 61 6.2.6 Participants satisfaction with their life in Aalborg ............................................. 64 6.2.7 Satisfaction with the role that the Carnival plays in the community ................. 66 6.2.8 Residents perceptions of the size of the Carnival in Aalborg ............................ 68 6.2.9 Gender ................................................................................................................ 70 6.2.10 Age ..................................................................................................................... 72 6.3 Results ....................................................................................................................... 73 7 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 81 References ................................................................................................................................ 85 Appendix A .............................................................................................................................. 91 Appendix B ...........................................................................................................................