Assessing the economic impact of cultural events: a methodology based on applying action-tracking technologies

Cultural events have taken on a growing role in territorial and tourist marketing of cities and destinations. Their planning is a fundamental process because they contribute to the tourist and economic development of the territory. Assessment of the economic effects of the events becomes, therefore, an important managerial instrument of planning and control. The traditional approach for assessing the economic impact of a cultural event is based on data relating to preferences and intentions of participants collected through questionnaires. This article introduces an innovative methodology that applies action-tracking systems for collecting behavioral data on the fruition of the tourist destination offer. These data improve the estimates of the whole economic impact of cultural events calculated through Input-Output models (direct, indirect, and induced effects). The methodology has been formalized on the basis of the results of the RFID for Festivals relative to the 2008 editions of two international events in the town of Trento.