Social Impact Assessment

Abstract

Social and cultural change can occur slowly, sometimes invisibly, and in many directions at once. It will usually be difficult to differentiate the changes caused or influenced by events and tourism from wider forces and trends in society. The approach taken in this chapter is to first define social impacts and social impact assessment, then examine the wide range of social impacts that could be the subjects of SIA. A series of figures presents types of social impacts that should be considered for the major subjects of IA, starting with individuals and ending with whole societies. In each of these tables there are suggested goals, methods and indicators. Specific types of social impact are expressed as goal statements, mostly benefits to achieve. The SIA process is then discussed, including methods of particular relevance to SIA for events and tourism. Special attention is given to the concept of social capital and how it can be assessed. Not only is social capital an important topic in the literature and apparently of interest to many policy makers, but exploring how to measure this concept is indicative of the challenges related to other social and cultural theories and concepts. Refer back to Chapter 3 for a parallel discussion of how to construct a theory of change model for social integration and inclusion. For related history and topical overviews, readers are encouraged to consult books that give the big picture, including Exploring the Social Impacts of Events, edited by Richards et al. (2013), and Event Studies by Getz and Page (3d. ed., 2016).