2.11 MICE Impacts

As a particular form of tourism, MICE tourism has been adopted by tourism planners to promote destinations and their economies. As Getz (1997) mentioned, MICE tourism has become the fastest growing type of tourist attraction and has assumed a key role in international, national, regional, and local tourism marketing strategies. This is based on the strength of MICE's outstanding marketing benefits. As Hall (1992) indicated, events have become an increasingly significant component of destination marketing. That is also the reason why many tourism operators are embracing the MICE market with local regions to establish convention bureaux to better assist in marketing these facilities (Hing, McCabe, Lewis & Leiper, 1998). Getz (2007) appraised the planned event impacts as of increasing importance for destination competitiveness.

Not all events are equal. An event is a combined concept that manifests differences by size, theme, geography, input, etc. Ritchie (1984) identified six types of event impact:economic, tourism/commercial, physical, socio-cultural, psychological, and political. Currently, the majority of research is based on economic orientation with relatively little attention being paid to the important social psychological and physical impacts. As Cooke (1982), Liu and Var (1986), Perdue, Long and Kang (1995) and Ayres (2000) described, tourism development is always justified on the basis of perceived and actual benefits and costs, particularly economic benefits versus social-cultural and environmental costs. Janiskee (2006) agreed with this opinion and said that despite the growing number of MICE throughout the world, they are still managerially unsophisticated because most literature is found by considerations of economic impact and cultural importance, which cannot in themselves provide a totally systematic and sufficient knowledge base for event organisers to plan, produce, and market events.

Social Perspective Impacts

Event impacts are two-faced. Each impact has both positive and negative manifestations. MICE's social positive impact is always obvious because to host an event better, a host city will intensify the main construction and urban infrastructure, develop a large number of new projects and road construction, and enhance city appearance and cleanliness levels. According to statistics for the 1999 Kunming Expo, Kunming accelerated its infrastructure construction by ten years to host the expo. Hosting an event is a perfect opportunity for a city to show and brand its image. A city's brand is always a key factor in the development of MICE; the spread of the city's image, the creation of city activities, etc., all help the destination to shape itself in the world tourism market. As Zhou (2007) said, in the short term, to enhance the image of a beautiful city, raising the visibility of the city is possible just as Sydney created a positive image for Australia's sustainable tourism development as the ‘Green Olympics'.

However, as for other industries, rapid growth can become a two-edge sword for MICE as far as environmental issues are concerned. While MICE growth can stimulate the growth of city development with building constructions, a growing road network, increasing numbers of motor vehicles and more tourists, all can result in man-made pollution. Since the Chinese economic reforms, China has experienced increased environmental damage as soil erosion, floods, drought, pollution, earthquakes, and a shrinking biodiversity have emerged as major growing problems in China. Additionally, China has suffered several large natural disasters that were related to, or added to environmental damage such as the floods in southern China in 2007, snowstorms in southern China in 2008, the Wenchuan earthquakes in 2008, large areas of drought in southwestern China in 2010, and an earthquake in Yushu in 2010.

The most sensitive environmental issue is that of air and water pollution. Bingham (1993) found that only 4.5% of municipal waste water in China received treatment by that time. Wen and Tisdell (2001) also mentioned that most large cities in China had air quality of a much lower standard than that set by the World Health Organisation by that year. Hosting MICE may not have an obvious direct relationship with air and water pollution but it still has some influence on, and is influenced by issues of air and water pollution. During the hosting of MICE, many organisations like to set off fireworks for celebration and entertainment, but such action adversely affects city air quality. According to Wang, Zhuang, Xu, and An (2006), the burning of fireworks during the lantern festival in Beijing has caused air pollution. They noted that the burning of fireworks releases many harmful pollutants that are associated with serious human health hazards. Qian (2006) also mentioned that construction materials for event sites are another source for causing pollution. Nowadays many exhibitors prefer more and more specially decorated booths which use building materials, wood products, print ads, carpets, and other items which may release harmful gases. Additionally, during the hosting period, a city needs to receive a potentially large temporary population and the extra flow of people can cause urban issues of traffic congestion, more living wastes, higher volumes of automobile exhaust, and water resource wasting.

Another environmental issue is natural landscape damage. According to ‘National Afforestation Condition Report 2014' issued by Office of National Afforestation Committee (2015), the loss of forests in China has been so serious that by 2014 only 21.63% of China's land was covered by forest and woodland. As mentioned before, many cities are willing to build more event-related constructions which leads to further excessive land use. Agriculture land and forests have been used to build MICE venues to high standards that include park areas, hotels, shopping areas, roads, etc. Yang and Zhang (2006) noted that the Chongqing Yongchuan Yuxi Exhibition Center initiated new construction on previously undeveloped areas in 2005, and this building cost 40 million RMB and was used for just five years and went over budget.

An employment opportunity is another important social impact. Some authors think MICE is a positive opportunity for a city to increase its employment by attracting more business to relocate and enhance the local business development. For example, the 2008‘European Capital of Culture' hoped for 4 million visitors and 17,500 jobs. Positive media attention, construction of facilities and infrastructure, and employment increases were identified as the primary beneficial output of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games (Humphreys & Plummer, 1995; Newman, 1999). And also increased hotels, restaurants, entertainment activities enhance the host city's hospitality employment demand. However, others think that, due to MICE, more non-residents come searching for jobs, which causes local resident unemployment rates to rise. Like Zhang and Liang (2008) reported once, the government's importing foreign labour certainly has caused a threat to local job seekers.

Residents' Perceptions on Impacts

As already stated, the main issue of this research is the perceptions of local residents with regard to the Chinese MICE market in Hangzhou. Resident perception is a wide and complex concept because any attempt to assess people's perceptions is not easy. Lindberg and Johnson (1997) noted that most analyses of tourism-related development have found that attitudes are a function of various perceived tourism-related benefits and costs. To state a cliché, humanity is complex and multiple. The need to understand and manage resident expectations and balance both positive and negative perceptions is also of particular importance. Like Easterling (2005) said, residents are key stakeholders in a tourism system;their needs must be identified, considered, and subsequently, satisfied. Bull and Lovell (2007) said in examining residents' perceptions and views about events, it was anticipated that this would also relate to the way in which such promotion was being successful or not.Due to tourism development, a number of evaluations have been published that report residents' perceptions toward tourism including MICE. Pearce and Stringer (1991) focused variously on biological and physiological processes, cognitive and mental processes, individual differences, inter-individual behaviour, and cross-cultural or between-group behaviours. Fredline and Faulkner (2002b) also defined a social representation theory that events are recognised on the basis of past experiences and prior knowledge serves as the reference point for new encounters. Fredline, Jago and Deery (2003) noted that in the recent decades, substantial work has been conducted examining residents' perceptions of the impacts of tourism, but events are examined to a much lesser extent. LeBlanc, Robinson, Picard & Long (2004) said the growing popularity of travelling to attend festivals and events has prompted researchers to examine this form of tourism. Measuring residents' perceptions is a pluralistic process. Longitudinal studies were also conducted by many researchers. For example, Soutar and McLeod (1989, 1993) studied residents' perceptions of social impacts of the America's Cup Defence over a four-year period. Mihalik and Simonetta (1998, 1999) also did the same thing on the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games. These researchers focused on the comparison of residents' perceptions before and after given events.

These insights into residents' perceptions have a close relationship with MICE social impacts. Burns and Mules (1986) established a framework to test the social costs related to MICE such as traffic congestion, time lost due to traffic detours, property damage, vehicle thefts, noise and accidents. Sherwood, Jago and Deery (2004) described social benefit as‘psychic income', which represents the ‘feel good' impact that local residents feel as a result of the event being staged in their city despite some of the inconveniences. Recently there has been a conscious effort by many local governments to provide social welfare for the residents through MICE. The reason is that whether event impacts are classified as positive or negative is often focused on the evaluations made by local residents. Andereck and Vogt (2000) stated that it is residents who ultimately have a voice in concluding which tourism impacts are acceptable and which are problematic. Residents tend to focus on whether an event enhanced their life quality. The most sensitive life quality standards considered mostly by residents are living costs. Although arguably MICE effects on the daily life quality of residents is often far from obvious and may only exert a subtle influence, residents are still sensitive to some aspects such as price changes, especially in the case of international MICE. The ‘2007 China's Regional Financial Operation' report of the People's Bank of China shows that residents and businesses have strong feelings towards change, especially inflation. In 2007 inflation was perceived as reaching 29.9% (when the percentage increase of food was 36%), which was significantly higher than the 2007 CPI increase of 4.8% over 2006. The most direct influence often caused by the MICE industry is on real estate prices. Soutar and McLeod (1989) highlighted the social issues that impact on residents, particularly in regard to housing. Sherwood et al. (2004) were also concerned that the planning and staging of big events such as the Olympic Games always raise issues related to changes such as resident displacement, increased rental and housing prices and forced relocation. Along with the heated real estate market in China, other kinds of real estate transactions have emerged. According to Su and Hu (2007), many cities' residents think some real estate prices have increased because some real estate developers specifically seek to host MICE to increase property values. There may also be other less tangible benefits associated with the staging of MICE that may affect residents' perceptions, like direct or indirect employment opportunities, facility and infrastructure development, entertainment and social opportunities, and pride and self-esteem brought about by being the focus of attention.

MICE sometimes means a general disruption to normal daily routines of residents, so residents are more concerned about MICE events than are the tourists. As Richardson and Long (1991) mentioned, residents' leisure needs and wants must take precedence over development for tourists. However, it is clear that there are invariably some negative impacts associated with an event. Some specific MICE impacts affect the whole of local society with environmental damage, breaks in local residents' normal life patterns, etc. May (1995) noted that there were a range of environmental concerns in regard to the staging of the Winter Olympics in fragile alpine areas such as destruction of vegetation and pollution. Under this type of pressure, local authorities must shoulder the responsibility to prevent environmental damage if they wish to create a long-term sustainable MICE policy.

Thousands of MICE are hosted in different cities in China every year, which cover all types of events. However, those MICE mainly focus on the outside attendees rather than local residents. Local residents are ignored by many MICE organisers, even for some small sized MICE. Mok and DeFranco (1999) emphasized that very limited research has been reported on the links between cultural values of the Chinese people and their preferences as consumers. Hiller (1995) described MICE as a special kind of tourism as theoretically they represent a separate factor for attending rather than the characteristics of the destination itself. Until very recently, many Chinese residents were only attracted to a few MICE mainly based on aspects of daily lives like cars, real estate, and furniture shows. However, China has a large population and the potential for local resident attendance is large. According to Chongqing governmental statistical analysis released by Chongqing municipal people's government (2007), more than 500,000 Hong Kong urban and rural residents were attracted to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, which provided a positive impact on the city economy. In short, attendees at a MICE may often be local residents, and as incomes and leisure time increase, the range of MICE to attract a local domestic market will increase. Such a trend has implications for local residents, not only as attendees, but for those who may not select to attend a specific show, exhibition, conference, or meeting. It is this reason that motivated the current research, the findings of which may lay a benchmark to which future research may be compared when the trends in the Chinese market for MICE are assessed.