An adaptation of SERVQUAL for events evaluation: an environmental sustainability addon

Abstract

The events sector is continuously growing, driven by economic development and increased spending on leisure. As events may generate a large amount of waste, an environmental impact assessment is increasingly important for any event. The importance and necessity of this has recently become more significant not only from an environmental preservation perspective, but also from a social responsibility perspective, and from a marketing and public relations perspective. This paper presents a study carried out with the objective of creating a model adapted from the ServQual to evaluate the quality of the service provided with events, complementing the model with an environmental sustainability add on. Based on an action-research approach, a model was built that was developed and applied to small events in a Brazilian municipality. As the main result of this work, this approach allowed to create a way to measure the event quality, considering the gaps between expectations and perceptions of the client, adapting the ServQual Model to an event-type service. Moreover, it allowed the inclusion of an environmental sustainability dimension to ServQual. This adaptation of the model introduced new managerial analysis and was considered relevant by event managers. This study extends the application of service management tools to the specific domain of events, building on the perspective that event management shares a great deal of characteristics of services.