Justyna Garbacz

Evaluation of the Impact of a Mega-sporting Event: Perception of Warsaw Residents' Towards Uefa Euro 2012 Justyna Garbacz

This unique book aim to evaluate the impact of UEFA EURO 2012, an inimitable event for Warsaw residents? and a big challenge for a developing economy like Poland. EURO 2012 was a great experience for the Polish people, and one which engendered a raft of positive emotions and a surge of national pride. The objective of this book is to discover how residents of Warsaw perceived the impacts of EURO 2012. The results show that, although the residents did not perceive the economic benefits of the tournament as being spread uniformly, a large majority appreciated its role in promoting Warsaw as a tourist destination and enhancing the international identity of the city. Whereas they generally displayed positive attitudes toward EURO 2012 in terms of lifting their pride and bringing the community closer together, they did also note some negative impacts caused by the event, such as traffic congestion and higher prices. A majority of the residents agreed that the positive impacts of EURO 2012 outweighed its negative impacts, which is the most important finding of the empirical study.