Taks, MarijkeOshimi, DaichiAgha, Nola2022-02-072022-02-072020Taks, Oshimi, D., & Agha, N. (2020). Other- versus Self-Referenced Social Impacts of Events: Validating a New Scale. Sustainability, 12(24), 10281. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1224102812071-1050https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/24/10281http://hdl.handle.net/10393/43251https://doi.org/10.20381/ruor-27468Publicly funded sport events are partially justified based on positive social impacts. Past research generally measured social impact for a generic and global “other” with claims such as “Events create new friendships in the community”. These other-referenced (OR) social impacts are generally higher pre-event than post-event and are inflated for both methodological and theoretical reasons. In the pre-event period of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we empirically tested OR items compared to self-referenced (SR) items, such as “Because of the event, I create new friends in the community” and allowed projection bias to vary between scales. Results of the experiment between an OR-Social Impact Scale (OR-SIS) and a similar SR-SIS confirmed OR-measures to be significantly higher than SR-measures. While artificially inflated OR scores may be useful for event organizers and politicians to gain support for hosting, estimates based on circumscribed self (SR) are a methodologically appropriate measurement of social impact.enmedia framingolympic and paralympic gamesprojection biaspublic discourserecency biasTokyo 2020Article10.3390/su122410281