The purpose of this research was to study the residents of Aalborg attitudes toward the social impacts of the Carnival in Aalborg. Aalborg is a city in Northern Jutland, Denmark and the Carnival it hosts in May, every year, claims to be the biggest one in Northern Europe. There are some known problems surrounding the Carnival, the most obvious being general messiness. Police officials have raised the idea to move the Carnival out of the city centre due to its increasing size and related problems. Another aim was to find out if the perceptions of the residents of Aalborg toward the Carnival vary by differences in demographic sub groups. Finally it was examined if residents’ views about various other aspects of life in the city influence their perceptions toward the Carnival in Aalborg.
Quantitative research methodology was applied in this study. Data was gathered with aid of a questionnaire which was based on a previously developed tool called Festival Social Impact Attitude Scale. The sample of the research was acquired via non-random sampling method which resulted in one hundred thirty eight completed questionnaires. Respondents were asked to indicate their expectations and values toward twenty four social impacts. Analysis of the responses was mainly based on the expectations toward the social impacts. In order to simplify and to identify underlying dimensions in the data, factor analysis was performed. Two main factors were identified, social benefits and social costs.
The result of the analysis revealed that the respondents had moderate to high expectation toward community benefits as well as being of moderate to high importance to them. In contrast the respondents had rather low expectation toward individual benefits and they were mainly of moderate to low importance to them. Finally, the respondents had moderate expectations toward social costs but it was mostly of rather low importance to them apart from one impact, littering. The study also showed that differences exist between some demographic sub-groups perceptions on the Carnival in Aalborg. Finally it was discovered that respondents’ views to other aspects of life in the city causes difference in their perceptions.
It is the authors believe that this study can help the organizers of the Carnival in Aalborg to plan an even better carnival in the future as they can now use the results of this study to identify in which areas they were are performing well and in which areas improvement is needed.
Keywords: Carnival; Social impacts; Community benefits; Individual benefits; Social costs