Evaluation Of Special Reconciling Economic: Implications For Mardi Gras In New Orleans

Event policy and need for evaluation

Discuss About The Evaluation Of Special Reconciling Economic.

Mardi Gras is one of the important historical events in the city of New Oreland. The French word ‘Mardi Gras’ means Fat Tuesday and it is a festival representing religious tradition as well as welcomes beginning of the season Spring. The festival gains its importance in every aspect including economic, social and culture. Previously the event was initiated by private parties that restricted the reach of the event to some elite class especially among men. However, realizing the growing importance of the economy through various channel state government and different public organizations are taking interest on the event (Getz & Page, 2016). This is now considered as the ‘Greatest free show on earth’. The essay aims to evaluate the implication of free nature of this event on its various stakeholders. In this context, the essay discusses scope of public policy and the necessity of policy evaluation and different approaches of evaluating an event in reference to specific Environment Impact Assessment.

Events have important implication for people’s life some way or other. Despite that, understanding regarding events and their potential outcomes are not developed completely. Proper knowledge should be there regarding how the events can be organized in a more efficient and effective manner, marketing plan of the events, and safe management of events and selection of suitable venue. There is however little knowledge about owner of the events, sources where the funds come from and how to allocate the resources with special attention on public investment (Hussain, Rigoni & Orij, 2018). In any events the resources are to be allocated in such a way that maximize social and economic welfare.

For any event to be appropriately managed and carried out, such that the welfare of all the participants as well as stakeholders of the concerned events are maximized, it is of immense for designing and implementation of a proper policy framework, which can be used by the management of the various events to carry out the events swiftly and purposely, by following an appropriate framework and steps to carry out the same (Getz & Page, 2016). However, the frameworks created for carrying out an event should be regularly monitored and analyzed to ensure that there is sustainability in conducting the events, for which evaluation of the events are of immense importance.

Keeping this into consideration, the concerned essay tries to evaluate the structure of Mardi Gras event in New Orleans and the possible challenges which carrying out the same can be subjected to.

Various approaches of event evaluation

There are various models and conceptual approaches which are used in the general framework, to evaluate various events, the primary ones being as follows:

Impact Assessment- This is used for evaluating the environmental, cultural, social and economic implications of especially those events where significant justifications for the events are required.

Cost-Benefit Analysis- This is more of an economic approach where the costs and benefits, positive as well as negative externalities and spill-over effects of the hosting communities are assessed (Dwyer, Jago & Forsyth, 2016).

Triple-Bottom Line Analysis- This method involves the assessment and reporting of the performance of an event in the economic, environmental and social parameters, which in turn shows the impacts of the same on the community hosting the same and on the other participants (Anderson et al., 2015).

Ethnographic Profile- This is more of a cultural and in-depth as well as ordinal form of analysis of the effects of the festivals or the events.

Economic Evaluation- In the recent period, the event can be seen to be attracting as large as $465 million dollars, thereby forming nearly 2.5% of the GDP of New Orleans. The government can be seen to be collecting 17.5 million dollars and the local businesses also benefiting from the same, which includes the tourism and hospitality industries especially (Irion, 2017).

Environmental Evaluation- The environmental impacts of the event, are however, mostly seen to be adverse, mostly due to the selling of plastic beads (of nearly 25 million pounds) and usage of cups, cans, bottles and similar components, which are not then disposed properly, thereby affecting the environment in an adverse manner (Miller et al., 2016).

Social Evaluation- The event, being one of the largest in the world, provides immense scopes of social and cultural integration as people from different regions accumulate to celebrate the same cause. However, with time and with the economy of New Orleans turning more into business-oriented economy, the implications of the rituals are getting lost.

One of the most widely used and robust tools for evaluating the environmental aspects of an event or of any development is that of the Environmental Impact Assessment, which can be referred to the examination of the impacts of the events (or other developments concerned) on the environmental aspects of the concerned regions (Prata, 2018).

The primary steps involved in EIA are as follows:

Screening- Assessing the need for EIA

Scoping- Identification of the impacts

TBL Evaluation of Mardi Gras

Prediction- Of the scale of the potential environmental impacts of the events

Mitigation- Restricting the impacts to acceptable ranges (Ivanova et al., 2016)

The carnival has huge environmental impacts due to the sell and usage of polluting substances like beads, cans, bottles and cups, which are mostly not disposed properly. As the event cannot be compromised, other ways like that of replacement of plastic with polylactic acid (in creation of beads) and recycling of the purchased beads can be plausible way outs to minimize the negative environmental impacts of the event.

The free events generally denote those events in which, no restrictions are imposed on entry and participation of people. Anyone can participate at free of cost in the concerned event.
Generally, an event has the different stakeholders, the primary ones being event owners and organizers, employees, supply chain, attendees, participants and governing bodies (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2014).

In free events, due to lesser imposition of restrictions on the participants, the supply side stakeholders and the government are subjected to greater dynamics and implications. The stakeholders of Mardi Gras include people outside the official public policy domain. Households, Krewes, different social organization and the huge crowd all have their own interest in the event. Two obvious features of public good is non-excludability and non-rivalry. Non-excludability indicates failure of excluding any people from consuming the good. In context of Mardi Gras, when the event was arranged by private parties then it was mainly dominated by males. Public policy intervention and free nature of the event open up the festivals to a large crowd including both male and female (Gold, 2016). Non-rivalry means consumption of good by any one person does not reduce satisfaction to other people. However, in case of the concerned events participation of various people make the events congested reducing satisfaction. The free events likely to bring the free rider problems. Because of absence of any advertisements or sponsors, the stakeholders face huge financial pressure especially after the hit of Hurricane Katrina.  The public authorities face difficulties in using the event as a main instrument of destination branding (Bryce, 2014). With lesser control on all the Krewes and entrepreneur the stakeholders are unable to devise complete control over media coverage and global brand messages. This makes the event spontaneous and fluid with some inherent uncertainty.

Different evaluation methods have its own advantages along with some challenges in measuring outcome of the event to assess its impact. In case of Triple Bottom Line Analysis, evaluation needs to be done on three aspects such as economic, social and environmental. The method though sounds quite appealing but challenges remain in implementing the concerned evaluation technique into practice. The first challenge is to measure outcome in the three separate categories. Collection of suitable data for evaluation is another hurdle in using the technique (Anderson et al., 2015). This become particularly difficult in case of free event like Mardi Gras. Involvement of huge crowd makes it difficult to collect appropriate data and information. Calculation of the event’s contribution towards sustainability is another major limitation of this technique. Other methods like impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis also have similar kind of difficulties in measuring event outcome.

Specific EIA tools to evaluate events

Conclusion

The essay summarizes effect of free events like Mardi Gras on the various stakeholders involved in the concerned projects. Events being an important part of people’s life often calls for public policy intervention and hence evaluation. Mardi Gras is one such important event of New Orleans. The event has long standing implication in economic and social life the city. This free event has now become the greatest free show on the earth. There are various approaches that can be used to evaluate an event. Among these Triple Bottom Line Analysis is the most suitable for analyzing Mardi Gras. The event has environmental impacts as well which is under the consideration of Environment Impact Assessment. Free nature of Mardi Gras brings various problems to its stakeholders. Financial pressure is one severe problem faced by the city council. With more and more spread of the events the stakeholders lose control over various aspects like media coverage, global branding and others.

References

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