Cultural Festivals and Regional Economic Development: Perceptions of Key Interest Groups 10 Stella Kostopoulou, Nikolaos Vagionis, and Dimitris Kourkouridis 10.1 Introduction Worldwide, national governments and local authorities are increasingly using cultural festivals and special events as key elements within regional development strategies, since these provide opportunities for tourism promotion, commercial outcomes and increased inward investment in host regions (Getz 2007; Van de Wagen 2005) and also help recreate the image of a place and contribute to the extension of the tourism season (Huang et al. 2010; Boo and Busser 2006; Kotler et al. 1993; Mehmetoglu and Ellingsen 2005). Moreover, small events require minimal capital development and thus, have the potential of generating substantial returns on small financial investments (Kim et al. 2010; Gursoy et al. 2004). While an extensive literature on the various social, cultural and economic elements of festivals does now exist (see Getz 2008; Waitt 2008 for comprehensive reviews), festival research was mainly focused upon mega-events and other hall- mark events leaving regional and small community cultural events rather underexplored (Bres and Davis 2001). Though rural and nonmetropolitan festivals have gained increasing attention academically (Higham and Ritchie 2001; Chhabra et al. 2003; Gorman-Murray et al. 2008), the majority of festival studies were focused on urban centers (Gibson et al. 2010). However, support for festivals and special events is thought to make a much more important difference in peripheral regions and small communities. As regional inequalities in economic and social conditions remain a high priority in regional planning, local governments tend to confront some of these problems by S. Kostopoulou (*) • D. Kourkouridis Department of Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 541 24, Greece e-mail: kostos@econ.auth.gr; kourkou@econ.auth.gr N. Vagionis Centre of Planning and Economic Research, 11, Amerikis street, Athens 10672, Greece e-mail: nvayonis@kepe.gr A ´ . Matias et al. (eds.), Quantitative Methods in Tourism Economics, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7908-2879-5_10, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 175