NRPA Measuring Impact of Park & Rec

Measuring the Economic Impact of Park and Recreation Services www.NRPA.org National Recreation and Park Association © 2010 All Rights Reserved 54 Translating some of these impacts into economic values is relatively easy (for example, costs of extra police or fire protection and off-site clean-up costs), but in other cases it is difficult, which is one reason why these costs are usually ignored. If some of these costs cannot be translated into economic values, they should at least be described, qualitatively assessed, and included in a presentation to a legislative body to be considered in an evaluation of an event’s net benefits. An alternative approach is to monitor the level of residents’ tolerance for these off-site costs during the event, and a questionnaire instrument for this purpose has been developed (Ap and Crompton, 1998). Displacement Costs There is some likelihood that visitors from outside a community who are attracted by a park and recreation agency event or facility may displace other visitors who otherwise would have come to the community but did not, either because they could not obtain accommodations or because they were not prepared to mingle with crowds attracted by the event. Data for economic impact studies are collected by surveying visitors who are in the area for the event. Each visitor then is regarded as a source of new economic impact. However, if each visitor merely replaces another potential visitor who stayed away from the community because of the congestion associated with the event, then there is no new economic impact: What the survey technique cannot identify and sample are those not in the area who, but for the event, would have been. If the foxes held their convention in the hen house, this survey technique would attribute positive impacts to the foxes and never notice that all the hens were gone. (Porter, 1999) While the scale of a park and recreation event would obviously be much smaller, the displacement cost principle was illustrated by events at the Atlanta Olympic Games described in Exhibit 5-2 (Ratnatunga and Muthaly, 2000). Exhibit 5-2 Illustration of the Displacement Cost Principle “To the surprise of all, the masses never came. Further, those that came did not spend the money expected of them. The tour buses sat empty and the area’s attractions remained relatively unseen. The Olympic consumer proved a very different marketing customer from the ordinary tourist or business traveler: an unpredictable hybrid—sports mad, tight-fisted, and uninterested in traditional tourist attractions. It has been estimated that on average, specta- tors at the Atlanta Games spent just $15 a day after accommodation and transport. Normal business travelers, by comparison, would spend $350 a day and ordinary tourists about $100 a day on a similar basis.” Olympic guests had no interest in eating out, visiting attractions, or retail shopping because they spent so much time getting to venues and sitting through events that by the end of the day, they wanted to relax in front of the tele- vision. Consequently, they spent much less than regular visitors to Atlanta, whom they displaced. Opportunity Costs Opportunity costs are the benefits that would be forthcoming if the public resources committed to a park and recreation project were (1) redirected to other public services or (2) retained by the taxpayer. Government investment in park and recreation projects and programs will have an economic impact, but the key question is, compared to what? Does government spending on parks and recreation stimulate the economy more than other kinds of investment? Almost 30 years ago, one of the pioneers of using economic impact studies observed the following: