J. Pang’s scientific contributions

Many studies have been focused on events' economic impact assessment at home and abroad, but recently it has received some controversies and arguments. Relevant research in China is just at an initial stage. Canton Fair which is held twice every year is the biggest exhibition in China with long and deep influence on Guangzhou city. It is one of the typical cases of large-scale events as well. Based on the cases of 104th and 105th Canton Fair, this article focused on the expenditure of buyers, exhibitors, trading delegations and the organizers, and then assessed its direct and indirect economic impacts with the Input-Output Model. This study revealed that one large-scale and regular business event could have tremendous driving effects on different industries as well as significant and long-lasting direct and indirect economic impact on the host city. The direct and indirect economic effects at one event of Canton Fair were 5.526 billion yuan and 10.798 billion yuan respectively, or 16.324 billion yuan in total. The proportion of direct to indirect impact was 1:1.95. The total economic impact of the Canton Fair accounted for 1.98% of the GDP in Guangzhou in 2008. The ranking of the driving effect from the participants were buyers, exhibitors, representatives of the company, organizer and trade group. What's more, this paper gave detailed discussion on the results.