Advanced Environmental Impacts

Advanced environmental impacts are generally considered to be those that constitute long-term behavioural change of visitors and residents. These could include:

  • Impact on travel patterns and mode following participation change
  • Reductions in personal carbon footprint following events
  • Changes in transport modes to future events
  • Changes in consumption behaviour following participation/attendance at events
  • Changes in amount of waste per event attendee/participant
  • Changes in proportion of waste recycled by attendee/participant following event

Light festivals and events typically encourage repeat attendance so provide an opportunity to impact on longer term change in participant attitudes or behaviour in e.g. energy consumption or transport usage. Longitudinal work, either at events or in follow up surveys, can assess the nature of the event’s impact upon behaviour change.

With annual and recurring events attendance profiles may provide some inference on changed behaviour in relation to the event itself, such as proportions of participants using different transport modes, using paperless entry systems, or any long term changes in waste stream make-up and volumes.

Although some impacts can be assessed using quantitative analysis tools (i.e. an estimate of the carbon consequences of changes in behaviour), primary data will need to be collected through participant surveys seeking evidence of nature of changed consumption behaviour, extent to which change can be attributed to participation/ event.