The increasing popularity of festivals and events, coupled with their positive and negative impacts on host communities, has led to a growing body of research on the impacts of festivals and events. As a substantial amount of this research has focused on assessing the economic impacts of festivals, there is growing demand for the measurement of the socio-cultural impacts of these festivals and events. To address this issue a study was conducted that developed a framework for the social impact evaluation of festivals and piloted a tool that measured the community perceptions of socio-cultural impacts. This paper has four aims. First, it provides an overview of the importance of understanding community perceptions of socio-cultural impacts that may arise from the staging of festivals and events. Second, the paper outlines a Social Impact Evaluation (SIE) framework suitable for the holistic evaluation of socio-cultural impacts of festivals and events. Third the paper reports on the piloting of a tool, the Social Impact Perception (SIP) scale that was created to measure community perceptions of socio-cultural impacts that may arise from the staging of a small community festival. Fourth, the paper provides recommendations for the future application of the SIE framework and the SIP scale.

Urban tourists seek out and spend a large proportion of their time in tourism precincts. Because tourists are constrained by time, the precincts must perform a variety of functions if tourists are to have a satisfying and fulfilling experience of the city overall (Griffin and Hayllar 2007). To date, however, there have been few attempts to identify and understand these functions. This paper reports on a study of six Sydney precincts - Darling Harbour; The Rocks; Manly; Norton Street; Parramatta and Cronulla - that sought to investigate the functions these precincts performed. Key findings across all precincts are that: tourists are able to distinguish between the different functions being performed by precincts; different types of precincts perform different functions for visitors; and some precincts perform better in meeting the needs of tourists. The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings for precinct managers.

The increasing popularity of festivals and events, coupled with their positive and negative impacts on host communities, has led to a growing body of research on the social impacts of festivals and events. To date, work by several authors represents research in impact scale development specifically related to the social impacts of festivals and events. This article reports on the scale developed by Small and Edwards in 2003, now known as the Social Impact Perception (SIP) scale, which measures residents' perceptions of the social impacts resulting from community festivals. The aim of this study was to test the SIP scale using a larger sample, allowing for further refinement of the scale using exploratory factor analysis. This research represents development of the SIP scale, and is in line with the refinement of other event impact scales, to which factor analysis has also been applied. This represents the most recent stage of this research, which has the aim of refining the SIP scale and identifying the underlying dimensions of the social impacts of community festivals. Factor analysis identified six underlying dimensions of the social impacts of community festivals: inconvenience, community identity and cohesion, personal frustration, entertainment and socialization opportunities, community growth and development, and behavioral consequences.