Sustainable Event Management of Music Festivals: An Event Organizer Perspective

Abstract

Sustainably managed music festivals have significant value and can provide a multitude of benefits to a healthy, sustainable and desirable society if their negative impacts are mitigated and positive impacts cultivated. To reach this great potential, sustainable event management of music festivals must become widely adopted and expanded as common practice. To drive this improvement of sustainable event management, there is a need to first understand the barriers and success factors event organizers face moving their music festivals toward sustainability. This study uses a research design of mixed quantitative-qualitative methods: a survey of thirty diverse music festival organizers across the United States and interviews with five selected survey participants. Research draws on pertinent literature from sustainability theory and practice, previous research on sustainable event management, existing strategies of sustainable events, and lessons from organizational change studies. Findings revealed seven key barriers and four success factors associated with sustainable event management of music festivals as well as three specific needs of event organizers to improve sustainable event management. With these findings, seven strategies are presented to help event organizers adopt and improve sustainable event management of music festivals. This study is significant because it fills an important gap in the academic literature on events and sustainability. Additionally, this study is immediately applicable to Untied States music festivals. The findings were drawn directly from the perspectives and experiences of event organizers, and the strategies are designed to be specifically applied to their sustainable event management work. SUSTAINABLE EVENT MANAGEMENT ii Acknowledgments Through the course of the past year and through all the moments of stress and frustration that were a part of this process, I looked forward to writing this page. The opportunity to write this acknowledgements page and give thanks is my reward for completing this challenging and fulfilling project. I‟m very grateful for all of those who helped me accomplish this feat. I couldn‟t have done it without them. My mom gave me the pep talks I needed and always managed to convince me that I could do it. My sister sat on the other side of the phone at all hours listening to me rattle on about my metal blocks. My dad‟s unwavering pride in me motivated me to continue pushing forward. My family is my constant, as they have always been. My advisor, Heather, has been amazing. She helped me develop every step of this project. Most importantly, her skillful guidance as a sustainability education practitioner is the reason why my experience in the LSE program has been a whole sustainability journey rather than a conventional two-year master‟s program. My beautiful LSE cohort is loving, supportive, and courageously passionate. I‟m grateful to have taken this transformational journey through LSE with them. The PSU sustainability community is full of energy and gave me opportunities to turn my ideas into reality. PSU really is blossoming into a fruitful living laboratory, and I‟m grateful to have participated in its budding stages. My Grandma and Grampa have believed in me my entire life and given me more love than a person knows what to do with. I wouldn‟t have had the opportunity to write this thesis without their generosity to support me in my graduate education. They have been a constant joy in my life, and have helped to create the person I am today. SUSTAINABLE EVENT MANAGEMENT iii Lastly, thank you to the music. The music always reminded me why I had embarked on this journey. It is an endless source of inspiration and motivation. SUSTAINABLE EVENT MANAGEMENT iv