Sustainable event management: a new perspective based on logistics framework and comparison of expectations and practices. The case of French music festivals

In the ongoing push towards industry-wide decarbonization, the cultural events sector emerges as a critical, yet understudied, area for implementing sustainable practices. While a substantial body of research exists on sustainable event management, a significant gap persists in directly comparing attendees' expectations of sustainability with the concrete actions implemented by event organizers. This paper addresses this gap by employing a logistician's lens. It utilizes a grid framework developed by Herold et al. (2022) to evaluate major French contemporary music festivals across seven key event logistics components: warehousing, procurement, transportation, inventory management, site selection, packaging, and reverse logistics. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative assessment of user expectations with a qualitative case study investigating sustainable practices in twelve prominent French music festivals. The central focus of this research lies in the inherent paradox of sustainable development within large-scale events. By their very nature, these events involve mass gatherings and diverse modes of transportation, inevitably generating negative environmental externalities. The paper delves into the tension between the inherent contribution to pollution by such events due to crowd movement and the growing public demand for sustainability practices. Two primary conclusions emerge from this investigation: firstly, that user concern regarding environmental impact remains relatively low. Secondly, the study suggests that collaborative logistics strategies hold promise as a potential path forward for achieving greater sustainability in large- scale cultural events.