Community Engagement as an Event Impact Management Tool: A Review and a Research Agenda

Abstract

Literature has highlighted the negative backlash from host communities for event hosting due to unfavorable impacts. Host communities feel ignored when event organizers do not appropriately acknowledge the communities' interests and concerns. Accordingly, studies have proposed community engagement as an impact management tool. However, evidence supporting the operationalized use of engagement as an impact management tool is scattered and inadequate. To this end, the current article systematically locates, analyzes, and reviews 68 peer-reviewed empirical research articles on the nexus of event impacts and host community engagement to examine the lag in the literature's development. As one of the first reviews to systematically analyze empirical research on the use of community engagement as an event management tool, this study contributes to knowledge enhancement by revealing the current gaps in the literature and practice, and provides future directions to strengthen the value of community engagement as an event impact management tool.