A recent survey looked at the economic impact of county fairs in Illinois. (Carrie Muehling/WJBC)
By Carrie Muehling
SPRINGFIELD – A recent study looked at the economic impact of agricultural fairs across Illinois at the request of the Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs.
The research looked at 15 county fairs across Illinois and surveyed about 5,000 people regarding spending habits in and those county fairs.
Researchers were most interested in the transaction value of the money as it turns over and over. They first looked at spending outside of the actual county fair and found a $90 million economic impact.
“That is just based on people traveling to, from and around the county fairs. That does not include money spent inside the county fair program. So, we kind of look at the economic impact concept as the tourism industry. So those people are spending money in grocery stores, in restaurants, in bars, in hotels and those types of services,” said Alex Norr, graduate student at the University of Illinois who worked on the study.
Norr said money spent inside the fair amounts to close to almost another $90 million across the state.
The state of Illinois allocates about $3.1 million to county fair program across the state for that $90 million economic return. There is also an educational value that is difficult to measure financially. Norr said county fair boards have been more creative in funding themselves in recent years as state money has decreased.
Norr said the study shows there are regional differences based on the diversity of the state. In McLean County, the annual county fair brings in nearly 50,000 people each year, producing about a $900,000 economic impact to the local economy.
“And with that said, we can make a fairly safe assumption that’s happening within kind of the Bloomington-Normal area, and we can also look at that and see that the fair is on average generating about a $19 million revenue. And that revenue goes to the carnival, the vendors of the fair, and so on and so forth,” said Norr. “If we look at the medium, we estimate about 20 percent of that, which is just under $4 million stays locally, and that’s hard cash.”
He said that only includes the week of the county fair, and doesn’t take into account other events held at the fairgrounds throughout the year.
In addition to providing information that can be shared with legislators and other decision makers regarding the economic impact of county fairs, the project also provided a learning opportunity.
“We looked at this as an opportunity to not only utilize our systems within Extension, but to tie in some campus based learning for students and also sort of expand into 4-H youth so that they could learn about primary data collection, data analysis, presentations and those sorts of things that most students don’t get exposed to until they have been on some university soil somewhere,” said Carrie McKillip, community development educator with the University of Illinois Extension in west central Illinois.
McKillip said students helped to present the study at the Illinois Association of Agricultural Fairs annual convention in Springfield earlier this month.
Read the complete 2014 Economic Impact of Illinois Agricultural Fairs study here.
Carrie Muehling can be reached at [email protected]
