NRPA Measuring Impact of Park & Rec

59 Measuring the Economic Impact of Park and Recreation Services www.NRPA.org National Recreation and Park Association © 2010 All Rights Reserved for example in events 2 and 3. It also illustrates the importance of independently estimating the economic impact of each different type of participant rather than an overall average. This point was illustrated in Exhibit 3-1. The importance of an overnight stay exemplifies the retailing principle that the longer people remain in the area, the more they are likely to spend. Increasing visitors’ average length of stay is the most efficient way to increase the economic impact of an event on the community. Host agencies should vigorously promote attractions that may persuade participants to stay additional days in the local area. 5. Both mean and median expenditures were calculated. Generally, the median is preferred, especially in small samples, because a few extreme values can distort the mean. Special Events Exhibit 6-2 , p. 60, reports the economic impact from 16 special events organized by park and recre- ation agencies. The Pro Golf Tournament (#1), Minor League Baseball Games (#6), and Grand Prix Motor Race (#10) are categorized as special events rather than sports tournaments because in these cases the dominant economic impact came from spectators to the events rather than the participants. In Chapter 4, it was advised, “Given the complexities associated with multipliers, the wisest course of action for park and recreational professionals is probably to focus their economic impact efforts on obtain- ing a good estimate of visitor spending and not attempting to use multipliers.” This advice was followed in the sports tournaments listed in Exhibit 6-1 and in many of the special events studies the author’s team completed. However, there are occasions when clients insist on multipliers being included. The studies in Exhibit 6-2 were selected because multipliers were reluctantly provided in those cases, using the IMPLAN software described in Chapter 4. These results are used to illustrate and reaffirm points made about multi- pliers in Chapter 4. The data in Exhibit 6-2 suggest the following: 1. It was noted in Chapter 4 that if multipliers are used, then the most appropriate of them is the per- sonal income multiplier that estimates economic impact in terms of increases in personal income. Notwithstanding this axiom, most organizations report economic impact in terms of value of sales transactions because this generates a much higher number. This point is illustrated in Exhibit 6-2 where the dollar impacts of sales transactions shown in column 12 are typically around three times higher than the personal income measures listed in column 13. 2. The sales transaction multiplier outputs (column 12) are likely to be substantially smaller than those shown because the IMPLAN output selected includes all retail spending rather than only the retail margins accruing to local firms (i.e., the sales multipliers do not include “capture rates”). 3. The jobs estimates in column 14 are likely to be optimistic because they assume the local econo- my is operating at full capacity and that there is no slack to absorb additional demand created by these short-term events. Further, these estimates embrace both full-time and part-time jobs, and many are likely to misinterpret them as referring only to full-time jobs. 4. Large numbers of participants and spectators do not necessarily equate to a large economic im- pact. For example, the Street Rod Run and the 4th of July Celebration (numbers 12 and 9 in Ex- hibit 6-2, respectively) attracted 1,409 (96 + 1313) and 55,000 (48,605 + 2,398+ 3,997) people, respectively. However, the economic impact of the Street Rod Run was substantially greater than that accruing from the 4th of July Celebration. This is explained by the celebration being only a one-day event and most of its participants were local residents, while the Street Rod Run event lasted for three days and most participants were from out-of-town. 5. The importance of ascertaining the proportion of visitors who are time-switchers and casuals is clearly demonstrated in columns 6 and 7. In seven of the 16 studies, time-switchers and casuals