Pre-event competitiveness : exploring residents’ perceptions of place management and local impacts

Purpose: There is a need to rethink destination competitiveness research, which tends to overlook local impacts of events and new developments. Conducting pre-event research challenges researchers to move beyond analyzing competitiveness as an end (concerning strategy, tangible outcomes, economic deliverables and value for visitors) to assessing competitiveness as a beginning (through perceptions of place management and local impacts). Design/methodology/approach: Survey research with local residents explores competitiveness pertinent to perceptions of place management and local impacts. Participation, enthusiasm and information availability are independent variables to assess whether statistically significant differences exist among residents’ perceptions. In total, 454 surveys were collected; the analysis involved exploratory factor analysis and t-test. Findings: Factor analysis revealed two factors for place management (organizational competencies; managing awareness) and local impacts (awareness of social benefits; local interest and support). Enthusiasm and information availability have stronger influences on residents’ perceptions than participation in pre-event activities. Practical implications: More emphasis needs put on ensuring information availability promotes enthusiasm, to help encourage participation. These three variables are a necessary basis for exploring residents’ pre-event perceptions – a key starting point to guide decision-making through later stages of an event life-cycle. Originality/value: Events and competitiveness studies focusing specifically on information availability and enthusiasm of residents is little-explored. By exploring these variables and extending insight on participation, this paper contributes to the literature by assessing pre-event resident perceptions of place management and local impacts (with data collected as event developments were being realized).