In spite of the increasing number of publication and newly established journals in event management, investigation of research topics by analyzing titles and abstracts of articles did not draw much attention among event scholars. This study is to find the trend of topics of research published in event management journals and suggest for future research. A total of 403 research papers published in the four event management journals were collected. The content analysis was performed with 4,087 words from titles of articles. The most frequently used words in the titles of articles are “event(s)” and “festival(s)” published in event management journals. The frequently used words in different journals and different time periods will be presented. Study limitations and future directions are discusse

Park, Kwangsoo

English

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

University of Massachusetts AmherstScholarWorks@UMass AmherstTravel and Tourism Research Association:Advancing Tourism Research Globally 2013 ttra International ConferenceAn Analysis of Research Topics in EventManagement ResearchKwangsoo ParkDepartment of Apparel, Design, & Hospitality Management North Dakota State UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/ttraThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Travel and TourismResearch Association: Advancing Tourism Research Globally by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For moreinformation, please contact scholarworks@library.umass.edu.Park, Kwangsoo, "An Analysis of Research Topics in Event Management Research" (2016). Travel and Tourism Research Association:Advancing Tourism Research Globally. 4.https://scholarworks.umass.edu/ttra/2013/AcademicPapers_Visual/4An Analysis of Research Topics in Event Management Research  Kwangsoo Park Department of Apparel, Design, & Hospitality Management North Dakota State University  ABSTRACT  In spite of the increasing number of publication and newly established journals in event management, investigation of research topics by analyzing titles and abstracts of articles did not draw much attention among event scholars. This study is to find the trend of topics of research published in event management journals and suggest for future research. A total of 403 research papers published in the four event management journals were collected. The content analysis was performed with 4,087 words from titles of articles. The most frequently used words in the titles of articles are “event(s)” and “festival(s)” published in event management journals. The frequently used words in different journals and different time periods will be presented. Study limitations and future directions are discussed.  Keywords: Topics, event management, content analysis  INTRODUCTION  Events and festivals have increased significantly in scale in recent decades (Jones 2012). According to the increasing market demand, the numbers of academic research in event management are also substantially increasing with diverse topics (Getz 2012; Lee and Back 2005). The field of event management currently hosts quite a few international journals around the world, such as Event Management, Journal of Convention & Event Tourism, International Journal of Event and Festival Management, and International Journal of Event Management Research. In spite of the increasing number of publication and newly established journals, investigation of research topics by analyzing titles and abstracts of articles did not draw much attention among event scholars. Monitoring academic journals from time to time is vital to recognize research trends in the discipline. Thus, this study in progress is to find the trend of topics of research published in event management journals and suggest for future research.  METHODOLOGY  Four event management focused academic journals were selected for inclusion in this study: Event Management, Journal of Convention & Event Tourism, International Journal of Event and Festival Management, and International Journal of Event Management Research. Key word search of “event,” “festival,” “convention,” “World cup,” “exhibit,” “wedding,” and “Olympic” was conducted in four top tier tourism and hospitality journals (T&H journals here after), Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, and Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research for selecting event related papers. Those titles and abstracts from the four top tier journal publications were used for separate analysis for validity purpose. A total of 506 research papers published in the four event management journals and 78 papers published in the four top tier hospitality and tourism journals were collected. The terms, “event,” “festival,” “Olympic,” “World cup,” “convention,” “exhibit,” and “wedding,” were used for searching event management articles published in T&H journals. Note that book reviews, short communications, conference reports, or editors’ notes were excluded in the analysis. There are several methods of analyzing research topics; however, this study focuses on a text analysis with titles and abstracts of articles. A content analysis is performed on the data. As a quantitative methodology, a content analysis emphasizes the frequency with which words appear in a text. The text data was content-analyzed using CATPAC II, a text-mining software program based on artificial neural networks (Woelfel 1993). The content analysis was performed with 4,087 words from titles of articles.  RESULTS AND DISCUSSION  The descriptive results show in Table 1. The results show the number of papers have been increased since the first event management journal, Festival Management & Event Tourism (former name of Event Management). Note International Journal of Event and Festival Management has been started to publish in 2005. Seven words on average have been used in each title.  Table 1 Descriptive Results of Event Management Publication Years published Number of papers Number of words in titles Average number of words in each title 1993-2000 85 646 7.6 2001-2005 82 583 7.1 2006-2010 170 1,183 7.0 2011-2013 126 886 7.0 T&H Journals (1974-2013) 78 507 6.5  It is not surprising that the most frequently used words in the titles of articles in both of event management journals and T&H journals are “event(s).” The results show that “festival,” “case,” “study,” “impact,” “sport,” “tourism,” “management,” and “convention” in order are the frequently appeared words in event management journals. In addition, the results show that “tourism,” “impact,” “destination,” “sport,” “convention,” “festival,” “tourist,” and “economic” in order are the frequently used words in T&H journals. “Case” and “study” have been frequently appeared in event management journals, which may show that event management journals have widely accepted case study of festival and events. “Tourism” and “tourist(s)” have been frequently appeared in T&H journals, which may indicate that T&H journals have been heavily organized under the theme of tourism subjects. The detailed results are shown in Table 2.    Table 2 Top 30 words Used in Event Journals and T&H Journals Event Management Journals T&H Journals Words Freq. Words Freq. EVENT 227 EVENT 46 FESTIVAL 146 TOURISM 17 CASE 58 IMPACT 16 STUDY 58 DESTINATION 9 IMPACT 51 SPORT 9 SPORT 48 CONVENTION 8 TOURISM 42 FESTIVAL 7 MANAGEMENT 37 TOURIST 7 CONVENTION 35 ECONOMIC 6 VISITOR 34 SPECIAL 6 MOTIVATION 33 STUDY 6 ANALYSIS 29 ROLE 5 SPECIAL 29 ANALYSIS 4 ECONOMIC 28 CULTURAL 4 MEETING 28 DECISION 4 SATISFACTION 23 EFFECTS 4 PERCEPTIONS 22 EMPIRICAL 4 DEVELOPMENT 21 HOTEL 4 EXPERIENCE 21 IMAGE 4 CULTURAL 20 INVOLVEMENT 4 MEGA 20 MAJOR 4 SOCIAL 20 OLYMPIC 4 ATTENDANCE 18 SERVICE 4 COMMUNITY 18 ASSESSING 3 GAMES 18 AUTHENTICITY 3 INDUSTRY 18 CASE 3 OLYMPIC 17 ENVIRONMENTA 3 SPONSORSHIP 17 ESTIMATING 3 DESTINATION 16 EXAMINATION 3 FACTORS 16 EXPLORING 3  The words in the titles of articles across the years show that “event(s)” and “festival(s)” have been heavily used, while “impact,” “economic,” “special,” and “sponsorship” seem to be less frequently used as time goes. However, “satisfaction,” “social,” “perceptions,” “meeting” have been increasingly used in the titles. Further detailed results are presented in Table 3.  Table 3 Top 30 Words Used in Event Journals 1993-2000 2001-2005 2006-2010 2011-2013 Words Freq. Words Freq. Words Freq. Words Freq.EVENT 52 EVENT 40 EVENT 70 EVENT 65 FESTIVAL 29 FESTIVAL 35 FESTIVAL 49 FESTIVAL 33 SPECIAL 19 IMPACT 15 CONVENTION 21 STUDY 15 CASE 17 MANAGEMENT 13 STUDY 20 TOURISM 14 IMPACT 14 CASE 10 CASE 18 CASE 13 ECONOMIC 14 STUDY 9 SPORT 17 SPORT 13 STUDY 14 OLYMPIC 7 MOTIVATION 17 MEETING 10 TOURISM 13 CULTURAL 7 VISITOR 16 SATISFACTION 10 SPONSORSHIP 10 ECONOMIC 6 ANALYSIS 13 CONVENTION 9 MEGA 7 SCALE 6 MANAGEMENT 13 FACTORS 9 MOTIVATIONS 6 COMMUNITY 5 IMPACT 13 SOCIAL 9 VISITOR 6 GAMES 5 MEETING 13 IMPACT 9 SPORT 6 MAJOR 5 EXPERIENCE 10 VISITOR 9 ANALYSIS 5 SPORT 5 TOURISM 10 PERCEPTIONS 8 COMMUNITY 5 TOURISM 5 CONFERENCE 9 MOTIVATION 8 GAMES 5 ANALYSIS 4 SATISFACTION 9 ANALYSIS 7 MANAGEMENT 5 ATTENDANCE 4 ATTENDANCE 8 DEVELOPMENT 7 ARTS 4 DESTINATION 4 EXHIBITION 8 EXPLORATORY 7 BUSINESS 4 FRAMEWORK 4 INDUSTRY 8 DESTINATION 6 DEVELOPMENT 4 MEASURE 4 DEVELOPMENT 7 ECONOMIC 6 MARKETING 4 NEW 4 GAMES 7 INDUSTRY 6 OLYMPIC 4 SYDNEY 4 MEGA 7 MANAGEMENT 6 PERCEPTIONS 4 ATTITUDES 3 PERCEPTIONS 7 PERCEIVED 6 EFFECT 4 AUSTRALIAN 3 SOCIAL 7 FUTURE 5 BENEFITS 3 DEVELOPMENT 3 SPECIAL 7 MEGA 5 BRITISH 3 EVALUATION 3 CULTURAL 6 RESIDENTS 5 CULTURAL 3 INTERNATIONAL 3 DESTINATION 6 SHANGHAI 5 EXAMINATION 3 ISSUES 3 EXAMINING 6 SUSTAINABLE 5 LOCAL 3 MARKET 3 FRAMEWORK 6 VENUES 5 MAJOR 3 MUSIC 3 INFLUENCE 6 ATTENDANCE 4   This study provides an overview of the topic trend in the event management articles. The results show that “event(s)” and “festival(s)” have been predominantly used, while some words have been less frequently used or been increasingly used as time goes. Event management researchers may consider this trend for developing future research topic. In addition, the results show that event management journals have widely accepted case study of festival and events, while T&H journals have been heavily organized under the theme of tourism subjects. This result will help event management researchers decide target journals.  LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTION  Study limitations and suggestions for future direction will be noted in this section. Although four event management focused journals were included in this study as of representing event management research, the exclusion of other multi-disciplinary journals may unreasonably downplay the accurate investigating of current hot topics in event management. Thus, other peer-reviewed and multi-disciplinary journals could be collected to allow for better understanding of the broad range of event management research topics. Further, thematic coding techniques can be applied to mine meaningful results, since content analysis based only on frequency of words was used in this study. The extent to which independent coders evaluate a theme of an article and reach the same conclusion will be obtained by inviting intercoders (Neuendorf, 2002). Future data collection may consider other variables, such as, statistical method, number of authors, sampling method, size of sample (if applicable), and regions.  REFERENCES  Getz, D. (2012). Event studies: Discourses and future directions. Event Management, 16, 171-187. Jones, C. (2012). Events and festivals: Fit for the future? Event Management, 16, 107-118. Lee, M. J., & Back, K. J. (2005). A review of convention and meeting management research 1990-2003: Identification of statistical methods and subject areas. Journal of Convention & Event Tourism, 7, 1-20. Neuendorf, K. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Woelfel, J. (1993). Artificial neural networks in policy research: A current assessment. Journal of Communication, 43, 63-80. 

An Analysis of Research Topics in Event Management Research

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1935&context=ttra

An Analysis of Research Topics in Event Management Research

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst