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 56 Another dimension of opportunity cost relates to the distributional consequences of a public investment: Who benefits and who pays should be a standard part of any impact analysis…The “big number” buries all of the assumptions and doesn’t identify the winners and losers; thus, “Everybody Wins.” In most cases, the winners are those who already have political or economic clout and the losers don’t know the difference. (Stynes, 2006) A typical economic impact analysis will conclude that a project will generate (w) dollars of sales, (x) dollars of personal income, (y) jobs, and (z) taxation revenue to government entities. The input-output models and the economic procedures involved in the study are likely to be complex for lay people to understand and evaluate, and ostensibly they appear to have scientific merit. Thus, the frequent claim “that the best scientific model available shows that (x) dollars of income and (y) jobs will be generated by a project” helps to carry the day. However, this conclusion may be erroneous because it has ignored costs of the project and, thus, is based on an incomplete analysis. References Ap, J. and Crompton, J.L. (1998). Development and testing of a tourism impact scale. Journal of Travel Research, 37 (2): 120-130. Archer, B.H. (1977). Tourism Multipliers: The State of the Art. Banger: University of Wales Press. Hughes, C.G. (1982). The employment and economic effect of tourism reappraised. Tourism Management, 2 :167-76. Illinois Association of Park Districts. (2005). Parks and Recreation Reinvest in Illinois. Springfield, IL: Illinois Association of Park Districts. Keaton, R.J. (1999). Sports pork: The costly relationship between major league sports and government. Policy Analysis #339. Washington DC: Cato Institute. LaFaive, M.D. (2009). Special effects: Flawed report on film incentive provides distorted lens. Mackinac, MI: Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Porter, P.K. (1999). Mega-sports events as municipal investments. A critique of impact analysis. In Fizel, E., Gustafron, E., and Hadley, L. (Eds.) Sports economics: Current research (pp. 61-73). Westport, CT: Prager Ratnatunga, J., and Muthaly, S.K. (2000). Lessons from the Atlanta Olympics: Marketing and organizational considerations for Sydney 2000.” Sport Marketing Sponsorship, 2( 3 ): 239-57. Riedl, B.M. (2010, January 3). Government economic stimulus plan is a giant shell game. Bryan-College Station Eagle , p. A10. Stynes, D.J. (2006, January 9). Personal communication.