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The Impact of Air Shows, Fly-overs, Open Houses, and Guest Days  on Public Opinion
Jon Connor, Patricia Huizinga,
Peter Kerr
  • Introduction
  • Demonstration Teams
  • Air Show Cost & Popularity
  • Theoretical Basis
  • Costs of Military-Sponsored Public Events
  • Study Design, Method & Results
  • Pilot Study
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions
  • Appendix A
  • Appendix B
  • Appendix C
  • Appendix D
  • References
  • About the authors
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    		Public events hosted by military installations have occurred throughout U.S. military history, with military parades now often supplanted by air shows, fly-overs, open houses and guest days. While many people intuitively feel these events are beneficial to the military, research has yet to find that such a correlation exists (Kaczor, 1998). This paper details a research method of sampling three bases from each of the four services, to determine a cost per event as well as how much each event affects the public's attitude toward the military. The data can be further broken down by service to ascertain which service produces the most impact for the least cost on each event, allowing other services to benchmark from the more efficient practices. Many other benefits to this research are discussed, including demographic data collection, advertising events, and recruitment potential. Furthermore, a pilot study collecting attitude change information at an air show is discussed and analyzed. Suggestions based on the pilot study are given for future research in this subject area.
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