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

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.

Spectators' perceived social benefits, subjective well-being and support intention: non-mega-parasporting events' educational perspective

“…Second, this study adopted a means-end theory to explain wheelchair basketball spectators' perceived social impacts, exploring how individuals choose products or services to fulfill their desires; this has a potential relationship with the consumer decision-making process. Previous research showed that perceived social impacts are estimated primarily when items are questioned using other-referenced rather than self-referenced measures; however, such research did not identify a theory to underpin this explanation (Taks et al , 2020). Therefore, this study adopted the means-end theory for wheelchair basketball spectators, and the cultural/educational value perceived from spectating wheelchair basketball is expected to be stronger than community benefits.…”

“…Additionally, Taks et al (2020) suggested changing the points of reference (other-referenced versus self-referenced) when measuring social impacts for sport events. However, they did not identify any theory to explain why self-referenced measures would underestimate reality than other-referenced measures.…”

“…Huang et al , 2016; Kim et al , 2015; Kim and Walker, 2012; Liu et al , 2014; Ma et al , 2013; Mao and Huang, 2016). This theory is one of the most popular ones adapted to research on social impacts and benefits (Taks and Oshimi, 2020). However, the social exchange theory is also criticized because this “modern exchange theory is neither a completely original nor satisfactory paradigm for social science in virtue of being a mixture of elements from psychological behavourism” (Zafirovski, 2005).…”

Mega-Para-Sporting Event Social Impacts Perceived by Tokyo Residents: Comparison of Residents’ Vitality

“…Social exchange theory is one of the most popular theories adapted to social impact studies [22]. The rationale behind this theory is to describe the behavioural interactions between two or more individuals and how these behavioural interactions reinforce the other's behaviour, which actors, on this basis, would exchange benefits for both [23].…”

“…All items introduced were written in English and translated to Japanese; two native speakers checked translation validity. Since the social impacts were measured a year before the mega-sporting event, the items were worded in the future tense, using the self-referenced [22,55].…”