College - Author 1

College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences

Department - Author 1

Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration Department

Degree Name - Author 1

BS in Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Administration

Date

6-2012

Primary Advisor

Bill Hendricks

Abstract/Summary

With the ever growing number of planned events around the world and the vast number of attendees, comes the potential to negatively impact the environment. The event industry is perfectly suited to reduce this environmental impact by incorporating sustainable practices into their special events. The purpose of this study was to assess the use of sustainable practices by event planners on the Central Coast of California. This study was conducted through the online survey application Zoomerang.com. The results of this survey indicate that 80% of respondents understand the importance of sustainability and15% were uncertain if sustainability is an important factor when planning a special event. This may be due to the fact that participants are not well informed on certain aspects of sustainability or that they do not pertain to their particular event. The aspects of sustainability that were considered most important by respondents were recycling and serving food from local farmers. Carbon offsetting was considered the least important aspect of sustainability. The findings indicate that most of the sustainable practices being incorporated by event planners on the Central Coast only meet an acceptable level of importance, which indicates that event planners are not using sustainable practices to their full potential.

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