The purpose of this study is to examine social impacts of a large regional event; the Great New England Air Show (GNEAS). Adopting a well-established social impacts scale, this study measured attendees’ perceptions on all dimensions of social impacts; 1) community cohesiveness; 2) economic benefits; 3) social incentives; and 4) social costs. To further our knowledge on social impact studies, this study connected a notion of individuals’ perception toward socially sensitive issues and used it to create segments among attendees. By comparing mean differences across these groups, this study can provide meaningful implications for local authorities and event planners on what domains of social impacts are needed to please different types of people who are concerned about diverse socially sensitive issues in differing degrees
